MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 
AND IN FOREIGN LANDS 




George Francis Train. 
From u recent photograph. 



My Life in Many States 
and in Foreign Lands 



DICTA TED 
IN Mr S EFENTT-FOURTH YEAR 



BY 

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN 



ILLUSTRA TED 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 






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I THE LIBRARY Of 
CONGRESS, 

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Copyright, 1909 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



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TO THE CHILDREN 

AND TO THE CHILDREN'S CHILDEEN 
IN THIS AND IN ALL LANDS 

WHO LOVE AND BELIEVE IN ME 

BECAUSE THEY KNOW 
I LOVE AND BELIEVE IN THEM 



/y 



PREFACE 



I HAVE been silent for thirty years. During 
that long period I have taken little part in the 
public life of the world, have written nothing be- 
yond occasional letters and newspaper articles, and 
have conversed with few persons, except children 
in parks and streets. I have found children always 
sympathetic and appreciative. For this reason I 
have readily entered into their play and their more 
serious moods ; and for this reason, also, have dedi- 
cated this book to them and to their children. 

For many years I have been a silent recluse, 
remote from the world in my little corner in the 
Mills Hotel, thinking and waiting patiently. That 
I break this silence now, after so many years, is 
due to the suggestion of a friend who has told me 
that the world of to-day, as well as the world of to- 
morrow, will be interested in reading my story. I 
am assured that many of the things I have accom- 
plished will endure as a memorial of me, and that 
I ought to give some account of them and of 
myself. 

vii 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

And so I have tried to compress a story of my 
life into this book. With modesty, I may say that 
the whole story could not be told in a single 
volume. I have tried not to be prolix, keeping in 
mind while preparing this record of events, " all of 
which I saw, and part of which I was," that there 
is a limit to the patience of readers. 

I beg my readers to remember that this book 
was spoken, not written, by me. It is my own 
life-story that I have related. It may not, in 
every part, agree with the recollections of oth- 
ers ; but I am sure that it is as accurate in state- 
ment as it is blameless in purpose. If I should 
fail at any point, this will be due to some waver- 
ing of memory, and not to intention. Thanks to 
my early Methodist training, I have never know- 
ingly told a lie ; and I shall not begin at this time 
of life. 

While I may undertake other volumes that will 
present another side of me — my views and opinions 
of men and things — that which stands here re- 
corded is the story of my life. It has been dictated 
in the mornings of July and August of the past 
summer, one or two hours being given to it during 
two or three days of each week. Altogether, the 
time consumed in the dictation makes a total of 
thirty-five hours. Before I began the dictation, I 
wrote out hastily a brief sketch, or mere epitome, 
of my history, so that I might have before my mind 
a guide that would prevent me from wandering too 

viii 



PREFACE 



far afield or that might save me from tediousness. 
I give it here, as a foretaste of the book. I have 
called it " My Autobiography boiled down — 400 
Pages in 200 Words." 

" Born 3-24-^29. Orphaned New Orleans, '33. 
(Father, mother, and three sisters — yellow fever.) 
Came North alone, four years old, to grandmother, 
Waltham, Mass. Supported self since babyhood. 
Farmer till 14. Grocer-boy, Cambridgeport, two 
years. Shipping-clerk, 16. Manager, 18. Partner, 
Train & Co., 20 (income, $10,000). Boston, 22 
($15,000). 

"Established G. F. T. & Co., Melbourne, 
Australia, *53. Agent, Barings, Duncan & Sher- 
man, White Star Line (income, $95,000). Started 
40 clippers to California, '49. Flying Cloud, Sov- 
ereign of the Seas, Staffordshire. Built A. & G. 
W. R. R., connecting Erie with Ohio and Missis- 
sippi, 400 miles. 

" Pioneered first street-railway, Europe, Amer- 
ica, Australia. (England : Birkenhead, Darlington, 
Staffordshire, London, '60.) Built first Pacific 
Railway (U. P.), '62-'69, through first Trust, 
Credit Mobilier. Owned ^ve thousand lots, Omaha, 
worth $30,000,000. (Been in fifteen jails without 
a crime.) 

"Train Villa, built at Newport, '68. Daugh- 
ter's house, 156 Madison Avenue, '60. Organized 
French Commune, Marseilles, Ligue du Midi, Octo- 
ber, '70, while on return trip around the world in 

ix 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

And so I have tried to compress a story of my 
life into this book. With modesty, I may say that 
the whole story could not be told in a single 
volume. I have tried not to be prolix, keeping in 
mind while preparing this record of events, " all of 
which I saw, and part of which I was," that there 
is a limit to the patience of readers. 

I beg my readers to remember that this book 
was spoken, not written, by me. It is my own 
life-story that I have related. It may not, in 
every part, agree with the recollections of oth- 
ers; but I am sure that it is as accurate in state- 
ment as it is blameless in purpose. If I should 
fail at any point, this will be due to some waver- 
ing of memory, and not to intention. Thanks to 
my early Methodist training, I have never know- 
ingly told a lie ; and I shall not begin at this time 
of life. 

While I may undertake other volumes that will 
present another side of me — ^my views and opinions 
of men and things — that which stands here re- 
corded is the story of my life. It has been dictated 
in the mornings of July and August of the past 
summer, one or two hours being given to it during 
two or three days of each week. Altogether, the 
time consumed in the dictation makes a total of 
thirty-five hours. Before I began the dictation, I 
wrote out hastily a brief sketch, or mere epitome, 
of my history, so that I might have before my mind 
a guide that would prevent me from wandering too 

viii 



PREFACE 



far afield or that might save me from tediousness. 
I give it here, as a foretaste of the book. I have 
called it " My Autobiography boiled down — 400 
Pages in 200 Words." 

" Bom 3-24-^29. Orphaned New Orleans, '33. 
(Father, mother, and three sisters — yellow fever.) 
Came North alone, four years old, to grandmother, 
Waltham, Mass. Supported self since babyhood. 
Farmer till 14. Grocer-boy, Cambridgeport, two 
years. Shipping-clerk, 16. Manager, 18. Partner, 
Train & Co., 20 (income, $10,000). Boston, 22 
($15,000). 

"Established G. F. T. & Co., Melbourne, 
Australia, '53. Agent, Barings, Duncan & Sher- 
man, White Star Line (income, $95,000). Started 
40 clippers to California, '49. Flying Cloud, Sov- 
ereign of the Seas, Staffordshire. Built A. & G. 
W. R. R., connecting Erie with Ohio and Missis- 
sippi, 400 miles. 

" Pioneered first street-railway, Europe, Amer- 
ica, Australia. (England : Birkenhead, Darlington, 
Staffordshire, London, '60.) Built first Pacific 
Railway (U. P.), '62-'69, through first Trust, 
Credit Mobilier. Owned five thousand lots, Omaha, 
worth $30,000,000. (Been in fifteen jails without 
a crime.) 

"Train Villa, built at Newport, '68. Daugh- 
ter's house, 156 Madison Avenue, '60. Organized 
French Commune, Marseilles, Ligue du Midi, Octo- 
ber, '70, while on return trip around the world in 

ix 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

eighty days. Jules Verne, two years later, wrote 
fiction of my fact. 

" Made independent race for Presidency against 
Grant and Greeley, 71-72. Cornered lawyers, 
doctors, clericals, by quoting three columns of 
Bible to release Woodhull-Claflin from jail, 72. 
Now lunatic by law, through six courts. 

" Now living in Mills Palace, $3 against $2,000 
a week, at Train Villa. (Daughter always has 
room for me in country.) Played Carnegie forty 
years ahead. Three generations living off Credit 
Mobilier. Author dozen books out of print (vide 
Who's Who, Allibone, Appletons' Cyclopaedia). 

" Four times around the world. First, two 
years. Second, eighty days, 70. Third, sixty- 
seven and a half days, '90. Fourth, sixty days, 
shortest record, '92. Through psychic telepathy, 
am doubling age. Seventy-four years young." 

It may be a matter of surprise to some readers 
that I should have accomplished so much at the 
early age when so many of my most important en- 
terprises were accomplished. It should be re- 
membered, however, that I began young. I was a 
mature man at an age when most boys are still 
tied to their mothers' apron strings. I had to 
begin to take care of myself in very tender years. 
I suppose my experiences in New Orleans, on 
the old farm in Massachusetts, in the grocery 
store in Boston, and in the shipping house of 
Enoch Train and Company, matured and hardened 



PKEFACE 



me before my time. I was never much of a boy. I 
seem to have missed that portion of my youth. I 
was obliged to look out for myself very early, and 
was soon fighting hard in the fierce battle of com- 
petition, where the weak are so often lost. 

It may be worth while to present here some im- 
portant evidence of the confidence that was re- 
posed in me by experienced men, when, as a mere 
youth, I was undertaking vast enterprises that 
might have made older men hesitate. When I was 
about to leave Boston in ^53 for business in Aus- 
tralia, and organized the house of Caldwell, Train 
and Company, I was authorized by the following 
well-established houses of this and other countries 
to use them as references, and did so on our firm 
circulars: John M. Forbes, John E. Thayer and 
Brother, George B. Upton, Enoch Train and Com- 
pany, Sampson and Tappan, and Josiah Bradlee 
and Company, of Boston; Cary and Company, 
Goodhue and Company, Josiah Macy and Sons, 
Grinnell, Minturn and Company, and Charles 
H. Marshall and Company, of New York; H. 
and A. Cope and Company, of Philadelphia; 
Birckhead and Pearce, of Baltimore; J. P. Whit- 
ney and Company, of New Orleans; Flint, Pea- 
body and Company, and Macondray and Com- 
pany, of San Francisco; George A. Hopley and 
Company, of Charleston; Archibald Gracie, of 
Mobile; and the following foreign houses: Bow- 
man, Grinnell and Company, and Charles Hum- 

xi 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

berston, of Liverpool; Eussell and Company and 
Augustine Heard and Company, of Canton. 

These were among the best known commercial 
houses in the world at that time. Any business 
man, familiar with the commercial history of the 
modem world, should consider this list fair enough 
evidence of the confidence I enjoyed among men 
of affairs. Let me reproduce here — partly as evi- 
dence along the same line, and partly because of 
the value I attach to it on personal and friendly 
grounds — the following letter from Mr. D. 0. 
Mills: 

"New York, September 30, 1901. 

^^ Hon. George Francis Train, 

" Mills Hotel, Bleecher St., New York, 
" My Dear Citizen : 

" The many appreciative notices that have come 
to my attention of your distinguished talents of 
early years lead me also to send you a line of ap- 
preciation, particularly as touching the part played 
by you in some of the great commercial enter- 
prises that have so signally marked the nineteenth 
century, notably in the Merchant Marine, and in 
the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, in the 
conception and construction of which you bore so 
distinguished a part. 

" The present generation, with its conveniences 
of travel and communication, can not realize what 
were the difficulties and experiences of the mer- 
chant and traveler of those early days when you 

xii 



PKEFACE 



were engaged in the China trade, and your Clipper 
Ships were often seen in the port of San 
Francisco. 

" The long voyage around the Horn, the danger 
experienced from sudden attack by Indians while 
traversing the wild and uninhabited country lying 
between Omaha and the Pacific Coast, are experi- 
ences which even an old voyager like myself 
questions as he speeds across the continent, priv- 
ileged to enjoy the comforts of a Pullman car, and 
a railroad service that has shortened the journey 
from New York to San Francisco from months to 
a few days. In recalling the many years of our 
pleasant acquaintance by sea and land, not the 
least is the remembrance of your kind and genial 
spirit, and I am glad to see that you have lost none 
of your sincere wish to do good. 

" With kind regards. 

" Very truly yours, 

" D. O. MlLLS.^' 

Mr. Mills has known me in many walks of life. 
We have at times walked side by side. At others, 
oceans have roared between us. He is my friend, 
and I was glad to receive this kindly word from 
him, after many long years of acquaintance. 

Although I am a hermit now, I was not always 
so. All who read this book must see that. I spent 
many happy years in society — and never an un- 
happy year anywhere, whether in jail or under 

xiii 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

social persecution; and I have lived many years 
with my family in my own country and in foreign 
lands. My wife, of whom I have spoken of in the 
following pages, passed into shadow-land in '77. 
I have children who are scattered widely now. 
My first child, Lily, was born in Boston, in '52, 
and died when five months old, in Boston. My 
second daughter, Susan Minerva, was born in '55, 
and married Philip Dunbar Guelager, who for 
thirty-six years was the head of the gold and silver 
department of the Subtreasury in this city. She 
now lives at "Minerva Lodge," Stamford, Con- 
necticut, with my seven-year-old grandson. My 
first son, George Francis Train, Jr., was born 
in '56, and is now in business in San Fran- 
cisco. Elsey McHenry Train, my last child, now 
lives in Chicago. He was born in '57. I was able 
to see these children well educated, at home and 
abroad, and to give them some chance to see the 
great world I had known. 

A last word as to myself. Readers of this book 
may think I have sometimes taken myself too seri- 
ously. I can scarcely agree with them. I try not 
to be too serious about anything — not even about 
myself. When I was making a hopeless fight for 
the Presidency in '72, I made the following state- 
ment in one of my speeches : 

" Many persons attribute to me simply an im- 
pulsiveness, and an impressibility, as if I were 
some erratic comet, rushing madly through space, 

xiv 



PREFACE 



emitting coruscations of fancifully colored sparks, 
without system, rule, or definite object. This 
is a popular error. I claim to be a close ana- 
lytical observer of passing events, applying the 
crucible of Truth to every new matter or subject 
presented to my mind or my senses." 

I think that estimate may be used to-day in this 
place. It does not so much matter, however, what 
I may have thought of myself or what I now think 
of myself. What does matter is what I may have 
done. I stand on my achievement. 

And with this, I commit my life-story to the 
kind consideration of readers. 

Citizen George Francis Train. 



The Mills Palace, 

September 22, '02. 



XV 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAOK 

When I Was Four Years Old. 1833 .... 2 
New Orleans then my home— All the family except myself 
perish from yellow fever. 

CHAPTER II 

My Voyage from New Orleans to Boston. 1833 . 16 
Four years old and the sole passenger — Sailors teach me to 
swear — My aunt shocked at my depravity. 

CHAPTER III 

My Boyhood on a Farm. 1833-1843 .... 21 
My grandfather a noted Methodist preacher— My first 
money earned. 

CHAPTER IV 

Schooldays and a Start in Life. 1840-1844 . . 35 
Leader of the school — George Ripley my school-teacher — 
Emerson comes to our village to lecture — Boston visited. 

CHAPTER V 

Early New England Methodism 46 

How I was reared religiously — Ideas of right and wrong — 
Things outgrown. 

CHAPTER VI 

In a Shipping House in Boston. 1844-1850 . . 63 
A place with my uncle — Progress rapidly made — I sell Em- 
erson a ticket for Liverpool — I engage Rufus Choate and 
Daniel Webster as our lawyers — My first speculation — 
Building fast ships. 

2 xvii 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



CHAPTER VII 

PAGK 

A Vacation Tour. 1850 79 

In Washington I meet Webster, Clay, and President Tay- 
lor — A letter with their autographs that served me well. 

CHAPTER VIII 

A Partner in the Liverpool House. 1850-1852 . 90 
In Scotland Lord John Russell receives me, and I meet 
Lady Russell — Reform in the shipping business — Money 
we made — The Duke of Wellington — I visit Chatsworth. 

CHAPTER IX 

My Courtship and Marriage— Return to Liver- 
pool. 1850-1852 109 

How I first met my wife — Engaged to marry her within 
forty-eight hours — Governors in my charge — Our wedding 
and the commotion that preceded it — Phrenology. 

CHAPTER X 
Business Success in Australia. 1853-1855. . . 126 
A fine income at twenty-one — Melbourne in those days — 
American ideas introduced — Accused of stealing $2,000,000. 

CHAPTER XI 

The Gold-Fever in New South Wales and Tas- 
mania. 1853-1855 141 

Lucky and unlucky miners — David D. Porter — Sydney in 
those days — Free immigrants— Sir John Franklin. 

CHAPTER XII 
Other Australian Incidents— A Revolution . . 156 
Proposed as a candidate for President — Riotous times — 
Curious incidents in business. 

CHAPTER XIII 

A Voyage to China. 1855 171 

Failure of ambitious plans — My first love of flowers — A 
remarkable Dutch colony. 

xviii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XIV p^^^ 

In Chinese Cities. 1855-1856 182 

Hetty Green's husband in Hongkong with me— Pirates and 
the slave trade — Honesty of the Chinaman — Eating rats — 
Pidgin-English — Li Hung Chang on board. 

CHAPTER XV 
To India and the Holy Land. 1856 .... 204 
New ideas in religion— My early Methodism recalled — 
Where Christ was born. 

CHAPTER XVI 

In the Crimea. 1856 215 

Plans in speculation that came to naught — The war, and 
what I learned of it. 

CHAPTER XVII 
Home Once More, and then a Return to Europe. 

1856-1857 221 

Boston and New York after a long absence — With my wife 
I go to Paris. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

Men I Met in Paris. 1857 226 

A ball at the Tuileries — Eugenie very gracious to me — An 
unexpected woman comes in — William H. Seward. 

CHAPTER XIX 
Building the Atlantic and Great Western Rail- 
way. 1857-1858 237 

Queen Maria Christina's fortune employed — Salamanca, the 
banker — How I secured a great loan. 

CHAPTER XX 

A Visit to Russia. 1857 249 

I carry a message to the Grand Duke Constantine — A din- 
ner with Colonel Greig — Moscow and the Nijnii Novgorod 
fair. 

CHAPTER XXI 

Building the First Street-Railways in England . 259 
A line in Liverpool that still exists — Making a start in 
London — Better success in Staffordshire. 
xix 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



PAGB 



CHAPTER XXII 
England and our Civil War— Blockade Running . 271 

Speeches for the Union in London halls— A plan to end the 
war— Lincoln and Seward— Arrested for interrupting Sum- 
ner in Boston— Dining with Seward when Antietam was 

fought. 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Building the Union Pacific Railway. 1862-1870 . 283 
Early belief in such a project— The Credit Mobilier and its 
origin— Men with whom I was associated. 

CHAPTER XXIV 
The Development of the Far West. 1863-1870 . 293 
Plan for a chain of great cities across the continent — The 
creation of Omaha— Cozzen's Hotel— Tour of the Pacific 
Coast. 

CHAPTER XXV 

The Share I Had in the French Commune. 1870 . 301 
In Marseilles I help to organize the " Ligue du Midi " of the 
Commune or " Red Republic " — Attacked by soldiers and 
almost shot — Imprisoned and poisoned — Deported by Gam- 
betta. 

CHAPTER XXVI 

A Candidate for President. 1872 . . . .314 
" Train Villa " at Newport — Independent candidate for the 
presidency against Grant and Greeley — A tour of the coun- 
try, in which I address hundreds of thousands. 

CHAPTER XXVII 

Declared a Lunatic. 1872-1873 323 

I defend Mrs. WoodhuU — Arrested and imprisoned for 
quoting Scripture— Fifteenth imprisonment without a 
crime. 

CHAPTER XXVIII 

Around the World in Eighty, Sixty-seven, and 

Sixty Days. 1870, 1890, 1892 331 

The tour that Jules Verne used as the basis of his famous 
story— In '90 I circle the globe in 67 days ; and in '92 in 60 
days. 

xz 



ILLUSTKATIOKS 



FACIWO 
PAGE 

Portrait of Citizen Train made recently . Frontispiece 
Portrait of Citizen Train's grandfather, the Rev. George 

Pickering 2 

Portrait of Mrs. George Francis Train .... 110 
Citizen Train in the Mills Hotel dictating his Reminis- 
cences 200 

Citizen Train's former residence in Madison Avenue, 

New York 286 

Citizen Train's former villa at Newport .... 314 
Citizen Train with the children in Madison Square . 324 

Citizen Train and his guests at dinner in the Mills 

Hotel 338 



y- 



XXI 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND 
IN FOREIGN LANDS 



CHAPTER I 

WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

1833 

My grandfather was the Reverend George Pick- 
ering, of Baltimore — a slave-owner. Having fallen 
in with the early Methodists, long before Garri- 
son, Phillips, and Beecher had taken up the abo- 
lition idea, he liberated his slaves and went to 
preaching the Gospel. He became an itinerant 
Methodist preacher, with the pitiable salary of 
$300 a year. The sale of one of his "prime" 
negro slaves would have brought him in more 
money than four years of preaching. He would 
have been stranded very soon if he had not had 
the good sense to marry my beautiful grand- 
mother, who had a thousand-acre farm at Walt- 
ham, ten miles out of Boston. My grandfather 
thus could preach around about the neighborhood, 
and then come back to the family at home. My 
father married the eldest daughter of this Method- 
ist preaching grandfather of mine, Maria Picker- 
ing. 

V 1 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



• I was born at No. 21 High Street, Boston, dur- 
ing a snow-storm, on the 24th of March, '29. 
When I was a baby, my father went to New Orleans 
and opened a store. Soon after arriving in that 
city I was old enough to observe things, and to re- 
member. I can recollect almost everything in my 
life from my fourth year. From the time I was 
three years old up to this present moment — a long 
stretch of seventy years, the Prophet's limit of 
human life — I can remember almost every event 
in my life with the greatest distinctness. This 
book of mine will be a pretty fair test of my 
memory. 

I can remember the beautiful flowers of the 
South. How deeply they impressed themselves 
upon my mind! I can recall the garden with its 
wonderful floral wealth, the gift of the Southern 
sun. I can recollect exactly how the old clothes- 
line used to look, with its load of linen — the rest- 
ing-place of the long-bodied insects we called 
"devil's darning needles," or mosquito hawks — 
and how we children used to strike the line with 
poles, to frighten the insects and see them fly away 
on their filmy wings. And I can remember going 
down to my father's store, filling the pockets of 
my little frock with dried currants, which I thought 
were lovely, and watching him there at his work. 

Then came the terrible yellow-fever year. It 
is still known there as the year of the fever, or of 
the plague. This fearful epidemic swept over the 

2 




Rev. George PickiTiiig, George Francis Train's grandfather. 



WHEN I WAS FOUK YEARS OLD 

city, and left it a city of the dead. It was a catas- 
trophe recalled to me by that of Martinique. My 
family suifered with the rest of the city. I re- 
member well the horror of the time. There were 
no hearses to be had. Physicians and undertak- 
ers had gone to the grave with their patients and 
patrons. The city could not afford to bury de- 
cently so many of its dead inhabitants. And the 
fear of the plague had so shaken the human soul 
that men stood afar off, aghast, and did only what 
they had to do in a coarse, brutal, swift burial of 
the dead. 

There were no coffins to be had, and no one 
could have got them if there had been enough of 
them. Corpses were buried, all alike, in coarse 
pine boxes, hastily put together in the homes — and 
often by the very hands — of the relatives of the 
dead. One day they brought into our home a 
coarse pine box. I did not know what it was or 
for what it was meant. Then I saw them take the 
dead body of my little sister Josephine and put it 
hastily into the rough pine box. I was too young 
to understand it all, but I can never forget that 
scene ; it starts tears even now. After nailing up 
the box and marking it to go " To the Train 
Vaults," the family sat and waited for the coming 
of the " dead wagon." The city sent round cart- 
ers to pick up the numerous dead, just as it had 
formerly sent out scavenger carts to take away 
the refuse. 

3 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

We could hear tlie "dead wagon" as it ap- 
proached. We knew it by the dolorous cry of the 
driver. It drew nearer and nearer to our home. 
It all seemed so terrible, and yet I could not un- 
derstand it. I heard the wagon stop under our 
window. Now the scene all comes back to me, and 
it recalls the rumble and rattle of those tumbrels 
of the French Eeign of Terror: only it was the 
fever, instead of the guillotine, that demanded its 
victims. The driver would not enter the pest- 
stricken houses. He remained in his cart, and 
shouted out, in a heart-tearing cry, to the inmates 
to bring their dead to him. As he drove up to our 
window he placed his hands around his mouth, as 
a hunter does in making a halloo, and cried: 
" Bring out — bring out your dead ! " 

The long-wailed dolorous cry filled the streets, 
empty of their frequenters: "Bring out — bring 
out your dead ! " Again at our home the cry was 
heard ; and I saw my father and others lift up the 
coarse pine box, with the body of my little sister 
shut inside, carry it to the window, and toss it into 
the " dead wagon." And then the wagon rattled 
away down the street, and again, as it stopped 
under the window of the next house, over the 
doomed city rang the weird cry: "Bring out — 
bring out your dead ! " 

A few days later another rough pine box 
was brought to our home. Again I did not under- 
stand it; but I knew more of the mystery of 

4 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

death than I had known before. Into this box 
they placed the body of my little sister Louise. 
Then we waited for the approach of the " dead 
wagon." I knew that it would again come 
to our home, to get its freight of death. I 
went to the window, and looked up and down 
the street, and waited. Far in the distance, 
I heard the cry: "Bring out — bring out your 
dead!" 

The wagon finally arrived. The window was 
thrown open, the rude box was lifted up, taken to 
the window, and thrown into the wagon, which 
was already loaded with similar boxes. They 
were in great haste, it seemed to me, to be rid of 
the poor little box. And the carter drove on down 
the street to other stricken homes, crying : " Bring 
out — bring out your dead ! " 

I now began to feel the loss of my sisters. Two 
had gone. Only one was left with me, my little 
sister Ellen, as frail and as lovely a flower as ever 
bloomed. When the next box came, and she, dead 
of the plague, was put into it, I thought it time for 
me to interfere. I went to the window and stood 
guard. Again came the terrible cry : " Bring out 
— bring out your dead ! " And my last little sister 
was taken away in the " dead wagon." 

I was too young to understand it all, but I re- 
member going with my father and mother in the 
carriage every time they carried one of my sisters 
to the graveyard. 

5 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

The next strange thing to happen was the 
arrival in the house of a box much larger than 
the others. I did not know what it could be for. 
The box was very rough looking. It was made of 
unplaned boards. My nurse told me it was for 
my mother. Again I took my stand by the win- 
dow. " Bring out — ^bring out your dead 1 " re- 
sounded mournfully in the street just below the 
window where I stood. I looked out, and there 
was the " dead wagon." It had come for my 
mother. 

I was astonished to find that they did not 
throw the box containing my mother into the 
wagon. It was too large and heavy. Four or five 
men had to come into the house and take out the 
box. It was marked " To the Train Vaults," and 
was put into the wagon with the other boxes con- 
taining dead bodies. Only my father and I sat in 
the carriage that went to the cemetery and to the 
vaults that day. There were my mother and my 
three little sisters ; all had been swept from me in 
this St. Pierre style — in this volcano of yellow 
fever. 

Finally there came one day a letter from my 
grandmother, the wife of the old Methodist itin- 
erant preacher of Waltham : " Send on some one 
of the family, before they are all dead. Send 
George." And so my father made preparations 
to send me back to Massachusetts. I can remem- 
ber now the exact wording of the card he wrote 

6 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

and pinned on my coat, just like the label or tag 
on a bag of coffee. It read : 

*' This is my little son George Francis Train, Four 
years old. Consigned on board the ship Henry to 
John Clarke, Jr., Dock Square, Boston ; to be sent 
to his Grandmother Pickering, at Waltham, ten miles 
from Boston. Take good care of the Little Fellow, as 
he is the only one left of eleven of us in the house, 
including the servants [slaves]. I will come on as 
soon as I can arrange my Business. '' 

I remember how we went down to the ship in 
the river. She lay out in the broad, muddy Mis- 
sissippi, and seven other vessels lay between her 
and the shore. Planks were laid on the bank, or 
" levee," as they called the shore in New Orleans, 
and up to the side of the nearest ship. We climbed 
over these planks and passed over the seven ves- 
sels, and came to the Henry. My father kissed 
me good-by, and left me on board the ship. 

There I was, aboard this great vessel — for so 
she seemed to me then — a little boy, without nurse 
or guardian to look after me. I was just so much 
freight. I was part of the cargo. We floated 
down the Mississippi slowly, and floated on and 
on toward the Gulf. We were floating out into the 
great waters, into the great world, floating through 
the waters of Gulf and ocean, floating along in the 
Gulf Stream, and floating on toward my North- 
em home. 

Thus I was floating, when I began my life 
anew ; and I have been floating for seventy years ! 

7 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

When my father said good-by to me, kissing 
me as we passed over the last of the seven ships 
between the Henry and the shore, I saw him 
put a handkerchief to his face, as if to hide from 
me the tears that were in his eyes. He feared that 
my little heart would break down under the strain. 
But I didn't cry. Everything was so new to me. I 
was too small to realize all that the parting meant 
and all that had led up to it. I could not feel that 
I was leaving behind me all the members of my 
family — in the vaults of the graveyard. The ship 
seemed a new world to me. I had no eyes for 
tears — only for wonderment. 

For many years afterward I heard nothing of 
my father. He had dropped below the horizon 
when I floated down the Mississippi, and I saw 
and heard nothing more of him. As my mother 
and three sisters had been buried together in New 
Orleans, we had taken it for granted that father 
had followed them to the grave, a victim of the 
same pestilence. But nothing was known as to 
this for many years. 

We were anxious to have all the bodies brought 
together in one graveyard in the North and buried 
side by side. The family burying-ground was at 
Waltham, where eight generations were then sleep- 
ing — that is, eight generations of Pickerings and 
Bemises. There were the bodies of my great- 
grandmother, and of ancestors belonging to the 
first Colonial days. My cousin, George Pickering 

8 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

Bemis, Mayor of Omaha, afterward had a monu- 
ment erected over the spot where so many Bemises 
and Pickerings lay in their long rest, to preserve 
their memory. But my father's body was never 
to rest there; nor was it ever seen by any of his 
relatives. 

My uncle, John Clarke, Jr., who had brought 
me out of New Orleans and rescued me from the 
plague, tried to find some trace of my father ; but 
no record or vestige of him could be found in that 
city. Every trace of him had been swept away. 
His very existence there had been forgotten, 
erased. No one could be found who had ever heard 
of him, or knew anything about his store. So 
completely had the pestilence done its terrible 
work of destruction and obliteration. As this 
period was prior to the invention of the daguer- 
reotype, we had no photographs of him. The 
only likenesses that were made then were ex- 
pensive miniatures on ivory. I have no picture 
of him, except the one I carry forever in my 
memory. 

Sixty years passed away. One day I received a 
letter from one of my cousins, Louisa Train, who 
was living in Michigan. She told me that her 
father and mother had died, and that the furniture 
of the old house, in which they and her grand- 
parents had lived, had fallen to her. " In moving 
an old bureau," she wrote, " it fell to pieces, and, 
to my surprise, two documents rolled upon the 

9 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

floor. These papers relate to you. One of them 
was a letter from your father to his mother, writ- 
ten from New Orleans shortly before you left that 
city. In it he says: 

" * You can imagine my loneliness in being in 
this great house, always so lively, with eleven per- 
sons in it, including my own family — now all 
alone. George is with his tutor. He is a very 
extraordinary boy, though only four years old. 
The other day he repeated some verses, of which 
I can remember these lines: 

** * I am monarch of aU I survey ; 

My right there is none to dispute ; 
From the center all round to the sea, 
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.' " 

I was to receive one other message from my 
father. Since I began writing this autobiography, 
my aged aunt, Abigail Pickering Frost, now in 
her ninetieth year, discovered a letter that my 
father had written to her and to her sister, my 
aunt Alice, who afterward married Henry A. 
iWinslow, upon the day that he placed me on the 
ship Henry, and sent me to my grandmother at 
(Waltham, Mass. Aunt Abigail, after the death of 
aunt Alice, who was one of the victims in the 
wreck of the Lexington, in January, '40, hid the 
letter in the garret of the old Waltham farmhouse, 
where she later discovered it. She now sends it 
to me from her home in Omaha, Neb., where it 
had again been lost, and found after a long 

10 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

search, as she knew that I would appreciate it as 
a part of my life-story. 

The letter came to me as a wail from the dead. 
I was very young, and childish, and thoughtless 
when I parted from him forever; but his letter 
brought back to me in a flood the bitterness of our 
life in New Orleans, the loneliness of my father in 
his great grief, and made me suffer, nearly seven- 
ty years afterward, for the pain that I was then 
too young to understand or feel. I give this letter, 
which is inexpressibly dear to me, just as it was 
written. 

*'New Orleans, June 10th, 183S. ' 

" Dear Sisters Abigail and Alice : 

" *Tis just two years since I left this place for 
New York, and arrived in Boston the evening of 
the 3d of July. I hope my dear boy will arrive 
safe and pass the 4th of July with you. He is now 
on board the ship (and the steamboat alongside 
the ship) to the Balize. I have written several let- 
ters by the ship, and found I had a few moments 
to spare which I will improve by addressing you. 
I refer you to the letters to Mother Pickering for 
particulars — as I have not time to say much. I can 
only say, my dear girls, that I am very unhappy 
here for reasons you well know. / part with George 
as though I teas parting with my right eye — but 'tis 
for his good and the happiness of all that he 
should go; take him to your own home, care, and 
3 11 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

protection ; he is no ordinary hoy^ hut is destined for 
a great scholar. 

" I am left here without a friend except my God ! 
in a city where the cholera is raging to a great ex- 
tent — 100 are dying daily 1 and among them some 
of the most valuable citizens. A sweet little girl 
about the age of Ellen, and an intimate acquaint- 
ance of George's, who used to walk arm in arm 
with him, died this morning with the cholera, and 
a great number of others among our most inti- 
mate acquaintances have passed on. Mrs. Simons 
died in six hours ! What is life worth to me ? Oh, 
my dear sisters ! could I leave this dreadful place 
I would, and die among my friends ! The thoughts 
of my dear Maria and Ellen fill me with sorrow! 
I have mourned over their tombs in silence. I 
have been with them in my dreams, and frequently 
I meet them in my room and talk with them as 
though alive. All here is melancholy. When 
shall I see you, God only knows ! I have relieved 
my heavy heart of a burden — a weight that was 
almost unsupportable. 

" In parting with my lovely hoy I have bequeathed 
him to Mother Pickering as a legacy — it being all 
that I possess ! You will take a share of the care, 
and I know will be all that mothers could be for 
your dear sister Maria's sake! 

" Give my love to Grandpa Bemis, Father Pick- 
ering, and all the rest of the family. Say to them 
that my mind is constantly with them, and will ever 

12 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

be so. I have written in great haste and very 
badly, as I am on board the ship and all is confu- 
sion, with the steamboat alongside. Farewell, my 
dear sisters! Do write me a line. If you knew 
how much I prize a letter from you, you would 
write often. Adieu, and believe me your affection- 
ate brother, 

" Oliver Train. 

** To Misses Abigail and Alice Pickering, 
Waltham, JIass.'* 

The other document mentioned by my cousin 
Louisa, was the deed of a farm by my paternal 
grandfather, making a certain physician trustee of 
the property. I never came into that property I 
This was my first bequest. I had begun, even in 
my infancy, to give away my property, and I 
have thrown it away ever since. This first 
" bequest,'* however, was none of my making, 
although I accepted it, without trying to question 
the matter. 

Another involuntary "bequest" of my child- 
hood was brought about in this way. My mother, 
when a girl, was engaged to marry Stebbins Fiske. 
It was by a mere chance that they were not married 
— and therefore my name is " Train " by a mere 
accident which changed the fate of my mother and 
her fiance. My father was a warm friend of Steb- 
bins Fiske, and when Fiske was called suddenly 
to New Orleans, just before the day set for the 
marriage, he left his betrothed, Maria Pickering, 

13 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

in charge of my father. The result might have 
been foreseen. It is the common theme of ro- 
mance the world over. My mother and my father 
fell in love with each other, and were married. 
There was no thought of unfaithfulness; it was 
merely inevitable. Fiske understood the situation, 
and forgave both of them, and continued the stanch 
friend of both. 

In his will Fiske left a small sum — $5,000 — to 
my mother's mother. It was the most delicate 
way in which he could leave some of his money 
so that his old sweetheart might get it. The terms 
of the will were that this money should be divided 
at my grandmother's death. It was so divided, 
and a certain portion of it should have come to 
me; but I never received a penny. This was my 
second bequest, for I allowed others to take freely 
what belonged to me. 

My third bequest was made with my eyes open. 
When I was about starting for Australia in '53, 
another uncle-in-law, George W. Frost, whom I 
afterward appointed purchasing agent of the 
Union Pacific Eailway, a splendid gentleman and 
a clergyman, came to me and said: "Your Aunt 
Abbie " (his wife) " and myself are going to take 
care of your old grandmother on the farm. Have 
you any objections to signing away your interest 
in the old place 1 " 

I said that, of course, I would sign it away. I 
was all right. I was going out into the great world 

14 



WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD 

to make fortunes. And I signed it away, as if it 
were a mere nothing. 

These incidents I mention here as illustrations 
of my whole life. Since my fourth year I have 
given away — thrown away — money. I have made 
others rich. But I have never yet got what was 
due me from others. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

MY VOYAGE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO BOSTON 
1833 

I FOUND myself a part of the cargo — shipped 
as freight, 2,000 miles, from the tropics to the 
arctic region, without a friend to take care of 
me. I was alone. This feeling, however, did not 
oppress me overmuch. Every one on board tried 
to make a pet of me, and, besides, there was so 
much to do, so much to see, so much to feel. From 
cabin to fo'cas'le I was made welcome. 

There was only one cabin passenger besides 
myself. I sat at table opposite this passenger, and 
I remember that at the first meal they brought on 
some "flapjacks" (our present-day wheat-cakes). 
I was very fond of them, and ate them with sirup 
or molasses. I noticed that my companion in the 
cabin did not use molasses with his. I could not 
understand why any one should eat his flapjacks 
without molasses. 

I thought this stranger too ignorant to know 
that molasses was the proper thing with flapjacks, 
and tried to help him to a fuller knowledge of the 

16 



i 



FROM NEW ORLEANS TO BOSTON 

resources of the table. I reached over, and tried 
to pour some molasses on his plate. Just then a 
heavy sea struck the ship, and I was thrown for- 
ward with a lurch. The entire contents of the 
molasses jug went in a flood over the man's trou- 
sers! Of course he was furious, and did not ap- 
preciate my efforts to teach him. I expected him 
to strike me, but he did not. It did not occur to 
me to beg his pardon, as I was doing what I 
thought to be a pure act of kindness. We after- 
ward became good friends. 

We were twenty-three days on the voyage. Be- 
fore we had been aboard long I became friendly 
with everybody on the ship, and they with me. 
I was very active, and had the run of the boat. I 
was like a parrot, a goat, or a monkey — or all 
three. There was no stewardess on the boat, and 
as I had no one to look after me, I led a wild sort 
of life. I lived in the fo'cas'le, or with the sailors 
on deck or in the riggings. I liked the fo'cas'le 
best. I soon got to feel at home there. Sometimes 
I was in the cabin with my molasses-hating friend, 
but the fo'cas'le was my delight, and there I was 
to be found at all hours. During the twenty-three 
days of the voyage I was not washed once ! I wore 
the same clothes days and nights, and became a 
little dirty savage ! 

It may be easily imagined that communication 
with these rough, coarse, honest, but vulgar sail- 
ors had a terrible effect on me. Ever^^thing bad 

17 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

that is known to sailors these sailors knew, and 
very soon I knew. I observed everything, learned 
everything. I soon cursed and swore as roundly 
as any of them, using the words as innocently as if 
they were quotations from the Bible. 

One of the games the sailors used to play with 
me was to go up into the rigging and call down to 
me that there was a great plantation up there that 
I could not see. Then they would throw lumps of 
sugar to me and tell me they came from the planta- 
tion in the rigging, and monkeys were throwing 
them to me. Of course I believed it all. How was 
I to know they were lying to me? I was only four 
years old. They stamped upon my mind the whole 
fo'cas'le — ^its rough life, its jollity, its oaths, and 
its lies. 

As soon as our ship came to anchor out came a 
boat with my uncle. I remember that there was a 
little dog in the boat also. My uncle took me to 
the wharf, and then to his tobacco store in Dock 
Square. There I found awaiting us an old-fash- 
ioned chaise, and my uncle said he would take 
me right out to my grandmother's, at Waltham. 
The drive took us through two or three villages, 
and through several strips of forest. Finally we 
drove up to a little gate that stood about half a 
mile from the old farmhouse, and divided the next 
place from the farm of my grandmother. There 
were my aunts, all waiting for me. 

Imagine the astonishment of my grandmother 
18 



FROM NEW ORLEANS TO BOSTON 

and of my aunts on seeing the dirty little street 
Arab that came to see them 1 I was as intolerably 
filthy as any brat that ever came out of a sewer. 
I fairly reeked with the smells and the dirt of the 
fo^casUel To the dust and grime of New Orleans 
I had added the dust and grime of the ship, for I 
had not been near soap and water since I left New 
Orleans. Fancy going to these clean and prim old 
ladies in such a plight I But I was at least in 
good health, and magnificently alive. 

The first thing they did was to summon a sort 
of town-meeting, to have me narrate the events 
of my voyage. But before I was to go before my 
audience I must be washed and have a change of 
clothes. This part of the program was postponed 
by an accident. The ladies heard me swear! It 
shocked their gentle minds immeasurably. But I 
didn't know what swearing meant. 

What can not a boy learn in three weeks that is 
bad? I suppose I must have picked up all the 
wickedness of the fo'cas'le without knowing what 
it was. It seemed all right to me; but not to my 
good grandmother and to my aunts. 

They wanted to cleanse me outwardly and in- 
wardly, and prepared to start outwardly. They 
insisted that I must change my clothes and have 
a good scrubbing. But before they began I told 
them some of my experiences aboard ship. I told 
them about the sailors getting sugar from the 
plantation up in the riggings and the monkeys 

19 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

throwing it down to me. They told me there were 
no fields up there, no monkeys and no sugar, ex- 
cept what the sailors had carried up with them. 

I was indignant. "If you don't believe my 
story," said I, " about the plantation in the rigging 
and about the monkeys and the sugar, you can not 
wash me or change my clothes." 

The line of battle was now drawn. If they did 
not want to believe my story, I was not going to 
let them do anything for me. That monkey-and- 
sugar story was my ultimatum. They refused to 
accept it. For three days they laid siege to me, 
but I refused to be washed or clothed in a fresh 
clean suit until they believed my story. I felt I 
was telling the truth, and could not bear to have 
my word doubted. Finally they said that they 
believed my story. 

There is an old tale of a boy who was told by 
his parents, who did not want him to cling any 
longer to the old myth about Santa Claus, that it 
was not Santa Claus that brought him all the good 
things on Christmas, but that they, his parents, 
had been giving him the presents year after year. 
The boy turned to his mother and said : " Have 
you been fooling me about the God question too 1 " 



20 



CHAPTER III 

MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

1833-1843 

The old house where I spent these years of my 
cliildhood and boyhood is now more than two hun- 
dred years old. It was the home of the old Meth- 
odists in that section, and had been the headquar- 
ters of the sect for a hundred years before it be- 
gan to have regular " conferences/^ Here lived the 
slave-owner Pickering, who married my grand- 
mother, the farmer's daughter. If it had not been 
for this home, which was a refuge and asylum 
for the itinerant preacher, grandfather Pickering 
would have starved. The farm was his anchorage. 
Otherwise he would have gone adrift. 

A religious atmosphere pervaded the place. It 
left the deepest impress upon my mind. The only 
paper we took was Zion's Herald, a religious 
weekly published by Stevens, of Boston. The dif- 
ference between this calm, religious life of the 
Methodists and the turbulent, rough, and swear- 
ing life of the fo'cas'le was very marked. But it 
took me a long time to get away from the atmos- 

21 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

phere of the fo'cas'le and into that of the Meth- 
odists. Even the bath and the clean clothes did 
not seem to change me very much. I discovered 
that cleanliness is not so very near to godliness, 
after all. 

Of course the old Methodists had prayers in 
the morning and at night, and they had grace at 
every meal. Every one knelt at prayers. But 
they could not make me kneel. I would not bow 
the knee. I had not got over the sailors' ways, 
and the monkeys, and the throwing down sugar 
from the plantation in the sails — the Santa Glaus 
part of it. I always remembered it. 

Of course I was taken to the little church, a 
mile off up in the woods, where my grandfather 
preached. It was in his " circuit." As we were 
coming home one day, and I was driving, the 
chaise struck a stone, and the old gentleman was 
jostled considerably. He impatiently seized the 
reins from me and gave the horse a severe flip 
with them, and drove the rest of the way himself. 
The little incident made a deep impression on my 
mind. I said to myself : " If this is the way 
Christians act, I do not want to have anything to 
do with them." 

The Pickerings were an ancient Southern — and 
before that, an English — family. Some of the mem- 
bers lived in South Carolina, some in Virginia, 
others in Maryland. One of them sat in Wash- 
ington's first cabinet. Like my grandfather, they 

22 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

were all slave-owners. Judge Gilbert Pickering 
was chairman of CromwelPs committee that cut 
off King Charles's head. Grandfather Pickering 
was a liberal man in many ways. I have spoken 
already of his freeing his own slaves. He chose 
the calling of an itinerant Methodist preacher, 
when to do so meant tremendous financial sacrifice 
and the loss of social rank. He almost starved at 
it, but he stuck to it with great nobleness of mind. 
It gave him a sort of religious freedom. 

Once he could have been a bishop in the New 
England branch of Methodism ; but he refused the 
ambitious title. He did not believe in bishops for 
their church. And so, setting aside every offer of 
preferment, every opportunity of rising or getting 
on in the world, he chose to labor at his simple 
calling, like a martyr. And he would shortly have 
found martyrdom in starvation, had it not been 
for my lovely grandmother, with her thrift and 
care. 

The branch of Methodists to which my grand- 
father belonged was very liberal. It was so lib- 
eral, indeed, that my mother and her five sisters 
had all been educated at the Ursuline convent at 
Charlestown, Mass., which was destroyed by the 
mob in '42. I remember that after the mob 
burned this convent to the ground the Methodists 
wanted to buy the site, and applied to the Roman 
Catholic archbishop in Boston, who replied: "We 
sometimes purchase, but we never sell.'* 

23 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Another incident of my boyhood may be re- 
called here, as it illustrates the stubborn pride 
that had begun to show itself even then. One day 
an elegant carriage drove up to the old house, and 
a young lady, beautifully dressed, got out and 
asked to see George Train. I went up to her, and 
she told me who she was. 

" You must remember, when you grow up," she 
said, " that I am Miss Sallie Ehoades. We are one 
of the few families of Maryland," she added, with 
a pride that was evident even to my boyish eyes, 
" that have been able to support their carriages for 
one hundred and fifty years." She spoke with the 
air of a grande dame, which stung my own pride 
keenly. 

" While I am very glad to meet my Southern 
relative," I said, with equal pride, even if I could 
not equal her manner, " we have kept our ox-cart 
on the old farm for two hundred years." I ex- 
pected the additional half a century to stagger her. 
But it did not seem to reach home ; and she drove 
away. This was the last I ever saw of " Miss 
Sallie Ehoades, of Maryland." 

In those days in New England we had to de- 
pend very much on ourselves on the farm, and we 
made as much of supplies as possible. I became 
an adept at making currant wine, cider, maple 
sugar, molasses candy, and sausages. I used also 
to make the candles we burned on the place, mold- 
ing them half a dozen at a time in the old candle 

24 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

mold, which was never absent from a country 
house of that day. So, in my lifetime, I have 
passed from the period of the tallow dip to the 
electric light. 

From four to ten years of age I earned my own 
living on the old farm. I believe it is the only in- 
stance in the world where a child of four supported 
himself in this way. What I mean by earning my 
own living is, that while the expense of keeping a 
little youngster like me was very small, I earned 
more than enough to pay my way. I dressed my- 
self. No one took care of me. I was left pretty 
much alone, except in the way of receiving relig- 
ious admonition. I was always running errands 
for the men and women of the place. There was 
constantly something for me to do. 

Moreover, I was very ambitious. I wanted to 
know everything that was going on about me. 
This has ever been my characteristic. I was born 
inquisitive. I have never been afraid to ask ques- 
tions. If I ever saw anything I did not under- 
stand, I asked about it ; and the information stuck 
in my mind, like a burr. I never forgot. I soon 
learned everything there was to be learned on the 
farm. 

The room I slept in was a great wide one, and 
I slept alone. I was not afraid; but I remember 
the great size and depth of that cold New Eng- 
land room. 

Life on the farm was busy enough. I often set 
25 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the table and did other things that the hired girl 
did, and could soon do almost everything just as 
well as she — from setting the table to preparing a 
meal. All this I learned before I was ten years 
old. I mention these little details merely to show 
the difference between the life I had to lead in old 
New England and the life my children and grand- 
children have since led. 

One blessing and glory was that I had the uni- 
versal atmosphere. The woods and fields were 
mine. I could roam in the forest and over the 
fields at will. The great farm was a delight to 
me. I was never afraid anywhere. In those 
days there were no " hoboes " or " hoodlums " 
roaming over the country. We kept no locks on 
our doors, or clasps on the windows. Everything 
was open. 

On the farm, as about the house, I soon learned 
everything that I could. I learned to sow and 
reap, to plant various crops, to plow, hoe, mow, 
harvest. And I had a special garden of my own, 
where I raised a little of everything — onions, let- 
tuce, cucumbers, parsnips, and other vegetables. 
I knew their seasons, the time to plant them, and 
when to gather them. I was an observer from the 
cradle. Little escaped my eyes. And I have 
made it a practise all through my life to master 
everything as I came to it. 

Of books I saw little in those days. The only 
ones we had on the farm place, in what was termed 

26 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

by courtesy the " library," were the Waverley 
\j!^ovels, Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Watts's 
}Iymns, and the Bible. There was, of course, 
Zion's Herald, the religious weekly paper from 
Boston I have already mentioned. These were 
our literature. I read everything I could get hold 
of, and soon exhausted the small resources of the 
farm library. 

We were so far from the village and the more 
frequented roads that the only persons who came 
to our house were peddlers, who sold us kitchen 
utensils, such as tin pans and buckets, and the lone 
fisherman, who would always sound his horn a mile 
away to warn us of his approach. 

The old house had the usual New England par- 
lor or drawing-room, the room of ceremony, never 
aired until some guest came to occupy it, or there 
was a funeral or baptism in it. I have never found 
farmers, anywhere in the world, who had any idea 
of ventilation. They slept in closed rooms, with 
out any regard to health or cleanliness — for noth- 
ing is so cleansing as fresh, pure air. There was 
the old fireplace, with the great andirons that could 
sustain the weight of a forest tree, and often did. 
Everything was a century old, and just that much 
behind the day ; but that was then the case every- 
where in New England rural sections. 

And what fires we used to have in that cavern- 
ous chimney! We would place a tremendous log 
on the andirons, and build a fire about it. Soon it 
4 27 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

would give out a terrific heat, but it was not suffi- 
cient to warm up the great room, into which the 
cold air swept through a thousand cracks and 
chinks. Our faces, bending over the blazing log, 
would be fairly blistered, while our backs would 
be chilled with cold. The farther end of the room 
would be icy cold, for drafts had free play. The 
house was poorly built, so far as comfort was con- 
cerned, although it was stout enough to last a 
eouple of centuries. Not only the winds but the 
snow found easy entrance. If it snowed during 
the night, I would find a streak of snow lying 
athwart the room the next morning, often putting 
my bare feet in it as I got up in the darkness. 

The ignorance of the Puritan farmers of New 
England was the densest ignorance that I have 
ever seen, even among farmers. They knew noth- 
ing, and seemed to care nothing, about the laws 
of health or economy. They were content to live 
exactly in the way their ancestors had lived for 
generations. They learned nothing, and forgot 
nothing — like the Bourbons. 

This suggests to me the fact that the climate 
of New England has changed tremendously since 
I was a boy. Most old people say something like 
this. When I was a boy there was snow every 
winter and all winter. Now there is comparatively 
little snow. Then it used to begin in November, 
and we were practically shut in on our farms, 
often even in our houses, for the winter. For six 

28 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

months the snow covered the earth. When we 
wanted to get out, we had to break our way out 
with an ox-sled. The old climate of New England 
has gone. 

When I was ten years old I began taking 
" truck " to the old Quincy market in Boston. It 
was ten miles away, but I soon got accustomed to 
going there alone and selling out the farm prod- 
uce and vegetables. I had to get up at four o'clock 
in the mornings, in order to look after the horse 
and to harness him. He was called " Old Tom,'' 
and was a faithful, trustworthy animal. 

I would arrive at the market before dawn, and 
would back the wagon up against the market- 
house and wait for the light. I fed the horse, and 
now and then, if the weather was particularly bad, 
I would put him in a stable for a few hours, at a 
cost of fifty cents, and feed him on oats. 

After closing out the " truck," I would drive 
to Cambridgeport, where I bought the groceries 
and other supplies for the farm. My grandmother 
trusted all this to me. After this I got a luncheon, 
which cost me a " shilling cut," as it was called 
then — twelve and a half cents. Then I would drive 
home, and could give to grandmother a full and 
itemized account of everything, without having 
set down a word or a figure on paper. This went 
on for two or three years. 

For amusement, as I have said, I had the uni- 
versal atmosphere, and I had the great old farm, 

29 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

and the forest and the fields. I had them all to 
myself. I roamed over them, and through them, 
at will. I used to set box-traps for rabbits and 
snares for partridges. I had a little gun, also, and 
a little dog, with which I would hunt rabbits or 
squirrels. The dog I have always regarded with 
wonder. He could see a gray squirrel at the top 
of a tree half a mile away. Some persons think 
he smelled the squirrel, but I am certain he saw it. 
And he was only a mongrel, at that. He would 
lead me to a tree, and I would shoot the squirrel. 
The little dbg — a sort of fox terrier — ^was the only 
real friend I ever had. He was my constant com- 
panion, whenever I could get to him or he to me. 
In the winter I used him as a warming-pan. The 
old farmhouse was cold — ^very cold. We had no 
means of heating it. At night I would find the 
sheets of my bed as cold as an ice-floe. Then I 
would send my little dog down under the covering, 
and he would stay there until he had warmed up 
the bed. 

Then there was pigeon-netting. This is an old 
sport that has, I suppose, died out in New Eng- 
land. In my boyhood, however, great flocks of 
wild pigeons used to come to the New England 
woods and forests. The device for catching large 
numbers of them by netting was quite primitive, 
but effective. 

My uncle Francis (for whom I was named), 
whom I used to help net pigeons, was quite a 

30 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM 

sportsman. He was fond of fishing, and he was 
a great hand at the nets. We had two places for 
spreading the nets, one in the " vineyard " and the 
other in a " burnt-hill " in the forest. All the 
fohage was stripped from several trees that were 
close together. Then we would arrange the net so 
it could be drawn together at the right time, spread 
it over the ground, and bait it. Then we would 
plant our stool-pigeons. As soon as we saw a 
flock of pigeons approaching we would stir the 
stool-pigeons by pulling on a string to which 
they were attached. They would move about, as 
if they were really alive. The pigeons would 
circle about the spot, attracted by the fluttering 
stool-pigeons, and then they would catch sight of 
the grain and come down. When the net was 
filled with them, we would draw the strings, 
and sometimes we caught as many as a hun- 
dred at a time. They were then killed and 
sold. 

By such work as this I was earning my own 
support. This is a sample of my life on the farm 
from four to ten years. I wore one suit of clothes 
a year, and the suit cost originally not more than 
$10, and was made at home. I had some little 
pocket-money occasionally. I was permitted to 
sell the rabbits and partridges, the spoil of my 
traps and gun. These small resources usually 
enabled me to keep a few cents — sometimes a few 
dollars — in my pockets. 

31 



MY LIFE IN MAInY STATES 

There is nothing more extravagant and truly 
wasteful than a boy with a few dollars in his pock- 
ets. He can throw away his slender fortune with 
magnificent bravado. One summer I had accumu- 
lated $17, and, naturally, I was itching to spend it. 
The hired man was going up to Concord to help 
celebrate " Cornwallis Day" (October 19), and I 
got consent to accompany him. There was to be 
a fair, and I took my money with me — very 
stupidly. The memory of it was soon all that re- 
mained. 

My first step in extravagance was the purchase 
of a bunch of firecrackers. It cost me, apparently, 
ten cents ; but actually it was my financial undoing, 
and cost me $17. I began to pop the crackers, and 
soon had a crowd of boys around me. They were 
envious of me. They didn't have money to buy 
crackers. I popped away with great noncha- 
lance, but husbanding my ammunition and pop- 
ping only a single cracker at a time. This was 
strategy of a high order; but I could not keep it 
up. I didn't know the resourcefulness of boy-na- 
ture. Presently, I heard a boy whisper just be- 
hind me, to one of his companions : " Just wait a 
minute, and you will see him touch off the whole 
pack ! " 

This was irresistible. My blood was fired with 
ambition. I fired the whole bunch at once! The 
hurrahs and yells were tremendous, and set me 
wild. I went and bought another bunch, and 

32 



MY BOYHOOD ON A FAKM 

set it all off at one time, as if firecrackers were no 
new thing to me. But my recklessness was not 
to stop there. I had been carried off my feet by 
the hurrah, as many an older person has been 
before. 

Our hired man came to me and said that a very 
pretty thing was going on near by. I went with 
him, and saw a man playing a game with three 
thimbles, a pea, and a green cushion. The game 
was to guess under which of the thimbles the pea 
was concealed. The hired man thought he knew 
and insisted that he knew, and the gamester want- 
ed to bet him that he didn't. After a while another 
man came up and tried his hand at guessing. He 
also missed. The loss of his money made him in- 
dignant, and he took up another of the thimbles. 
The pea was not there. 

The thing then seemed so easy to our hired 
man that he asked to try a dollar on the game. 
Then the irate man who had lost his money took 
up the other thimble and brushed the pea off the 
cushion. Our hired man, who let nothing that was 
going on about the green cushion escape his 
sight, saw the pea swept away, and eagerly bet 
the dealer that there was no pea there at all. The 
dealer took him up, and lifted the thimble, and lo ! 
there was the pea. This did not satisfy the hired 
man, who kept on betting, and losing until he had 
no money left. Thus our savings went up in 
powder smoke and in guesses at the whereabouts 

33 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of a fleeting pea. I did not gamble then, nor have 
I gambled since. 

But the firecracker day had its lessons for me. 
It taught me some things about money and its 
power, and it got me interested in Cornwallis. I 
began to read American history. 



34 



CHAPTER IV 

SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 

1840-1844 

I WENT to school, of course, for this was a part 
of the serious business of New England life. Our 
schoolhouse was two and a half miles distant, and 
the path to it lay across half a dozen farms and 
ran through the forest for a mile. There I was 
taught the " three R's," and nothing else. There 
was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the 
little 'rithmetic, no mathematics. I learned to 
cipher, read, and write; but I learned these rudi- 
mentary branches very rapidly. At night, in the 
old farmhouse, my aunts would go over the tasks 
of the day with me. 

Our principal diversions were in the winter, 
when we had delightful sleighing parties. The 
school-children always had one great picnic. 
There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher 
would be in charge of the party. We visited the 
surrounding towns, and it was a great affair to 
us. We looked forward to it from the very com- 
mencement of the school year. On examination 

35 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

day, at the close of the term, we children had to 
clean the schoolhouse. There was no janitor, as 
now. But we enjoyed the work, and took a cer- 
tain childish pride in it. 

I remember that one of my earliest ambitions 
was gratified at that period when I was chosen 
leader of the school. I stood at the head of every- 
thing. And it was no idle compliment. Boys are 
not, like their elders, influenced by envy or jeal- 
ousy. They invariably try to select the best 
" man " among them for their leader. Jealousies, 
envy, and heart-burnings come afterward. 

Heading the account of the collision between 
the Priscilla and the Powhatan in the Sound off 
Newport, this year, and the peril that threat- 
ened five hundred passengers, there came to my 
mind the recollection of a catastrophe that hap- 
pened sixty-two years ago, and how the tidings 
were brought to me. I can live over again the 
horror of that day. I recall that it was in Jan- 
uary, '40. 

It was a stormy, bitter day, and I was in the 
little schoolhouse at Pond End, two and a half 
miles from the farm. The snow had been falling 
a long while, and everything was covered with it. 
As the day advanced, and the snow piled deeper 
and ever deeper about the little house, and cov- 
ered the forests and fields with a thicker blanket 
of white, we began to grow anxious. Now and then 
a sleigh would drive up through the drifting, fly- 

36 



SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 

ing snow, and the father and mother of some child 
in the school would come in and take away the 
little boy or girl and disappear in the storm. I 
began to think, with dread, of how I, a little fellow, 
would be able to find my way home through the 
blinding snow, when suddenly there came a tap 
on the door. The teacher went to the door, and 
called to me : " George, your uncle Emery Bemis 
has just arrived from Boston in his sleigh, and 
wants to take you home with him." 

When I got into the sleigh he seemed to be 
very sad. He sat quiet for some little time, and 
then turned to me and said : " George, I have some 
terrible news for your grandmother. She is at the 
farmhouse now, waiting to see her youngest 
daughter, your aunt Alice. Your grandmother 
expects me to bring her. She was coming from 
New York on the steamer Lexington, with the dead 
body of her husband [and his brother and father], 
which she wanted to bury in the family graveyard. 
There were three hundred passengers on the ship. 
The Lexington was wrecked and burned in the 
Sound, and three hundred persons were lost — 
burned or drowned. Your aunt was lost. Only 
five passengers were saved." 

Such were the horrible tidings my uncle was 
bearing to my grandmother and my aunts, instead 
of the living presence they were expecting. This 
incident left an ineradicable impression upon my 
mind. There was one peculiar thing about the ac- 

37 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

cident of the Lexington that struck me at the time 
as being weird and unforgettable. When the ship 
went to pieces the pilot-house was shattered, and 
a portion of it floated away and lodged against the 
rocks near the shore. The bell itself was unin- 
jured, and still swung from its hangings, and there 
it remained, clanging dolorously in every wind. 
It seemed to my boyish fancy to be tolling per- 
petually for the dead of the Lexington. 

Years afterward, while making a speech in a 
political campaign, I made use of this incident. I 
said the Democratic party of the day was adrift 
from its ancient moorings, and was always calling 
up something of the remote past. It was like the 
bell of the Lexington, caught upon the rocks that 
had wrecked the ship and tolling forever for the 
dead. 

George Ripley, who was the leader at Brook 
Farm and, long afterward, was associated with 
Charles A. Dana in the preparation of the Ameri- 
can Cyclopedia, was at one time my school-teacher 
on Waltham Plains. General Nathaniel P. Banks, 
who was a few years older than I, was chairman 
of our library committee. "We used to have lec- 
tures in Eumford Hall. (By the way, this hall 
was named for Count Rumford, whom most per- 
sons take to have been a German or other for- 
eigner, on account of his foreign title ; but he was 
an American.) The lecture night was always a 
great event in Waltham. One day a man came to 

38 



SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 



me and said, " Here is a remarkable letter." He 
read it to me, and it was as follows : 

" To the Library Coinmittcej Waltham: 

" I will come to lecture for $5 for myself, but 
ask you for four quarts of oats for my horse. 
" Ralph Waldo Emerson." 

The lecture that Mr. Emerson delivered for 
us boys of the library committee in Waltham was 
entitled " Nature." We paid him $5 and four 
quarts of oats for it. He delivered it many times 
afterward, when his name was on every lip in the 
civilized world, and he received $150 to $500 for 
each delivery. He was just as great then, in that 
hour in the little old town of Waltham ; it was the 
same lecture, with the same exquisite thought and 
marvelous wisdom ; but it took years for the world 
to recognize the greatness and the beauty and the 
wisdom of him, and to value them at their higher 
worth. The world paid for the name, not for the 
lecture or the truth and beauty. 

During this period I attended school for three 
months every summer. My grandparents wanted 
to make a clergyman of me. But that sort of 
thing was not in me. I was sent up to Mr. Leon- 
ard Frost, at Framingham, ten miles distant, and 
lived with him. Certainly my board could not 
have been more than $2 a week, and the tuition 
amounted to scarcely anything. I was with Mr. 

39 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Frost just three months, at a total expenditure for 
educational purposes of about $25! This consti- 
tuted my college education. I was then fourteen 
years old; and this is all the school education I 
have ever had. 

The chief game we played when I was a boy 
was what we called " round ball," which has now 
developed into the national game of baseball. I 
was quite an adept at the game, as I took great in- 
terest always in all sports and easily excelled in 
them. I had also a fancy for chemistry, and my 
first experiment was the result of sitting down 
upon a bottle of chemicals. It cost me certain por- 
tions of my clothing, and made a lasting impres- 
sion upon me. It effectually put an end to my 
desire to study chemistry further. 

About this time a sweeping change came 
in my life. One day I happened to overhear my 
aunts talking about my future. The good ladies 
had come to the conclusion that a clergyman's life 
was not the life for me ; so they were debating the 
question of sending me out to learn a trade. They 
said it was evident that I would not be a clergy- 
man, a doctor, or a lawyer ; so I must be a black- 
smith, or a carpenter, or a mason. Now I did not 
want to be any of these things. 

As soon as I got an opportunity I told my aunts 
that I did not intend to be a carpenter, or a mason, 
or a blacksmith. I said I was going down to Bos- 
ton — not to the market, but to get a position some- 

40 



SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 

where. They were astounded. They could not be- 
lieve their ears. But I went. 

The city seemed bigger than ever, now that I 
had to face it and conquer it, or have it conquer 
me. But I was not beaten before the fight. I be- 
gan walking through the streets with as bold a 
heart as I could summon, and kept searching the 
windows and doors for any sign of " Boy wanted." 
I had seen such notices pasted up in windows when 
I came into the town on marketing trips. 

Finally I saw such a sign on a drug-store in 
Washington Street, and walked in. I told the 
druggist I should like to go to work. He offered 
me my board and lodging for looking after the 
place. I asked him what sort of clothes he wanted 
me to wear, and he replied that the suit I had on 
— my Sunday clothes — would do for every day. 
I was quite happy and started to work. 

The first night I slept in the same building 
with the store, but above it. About one o'clock in 
the morning the bell rang. Some one wanted the 
doctor at once. I said I wasn't a doctor, and that 
the doctor was not there. The messenger ran off. 
This was bad enough, to be routed up in the mid- 
dle of the night that way. The next day the drug- 
gist went away from the store on some business. 
I sampled everything edible in the place. I tried 
the different kinds of candy, and sirups, and then 
went out and bought some lemonade and a dozen 
raw oysters. The result may be imagined. After 

41 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

a few minutes of Mont Pelee, I decided that I had 
had enough of the drug business. I told the drug- 
gist my decision, shut the door, and left the store, 
a disappointed and lonely little fellow. 

I hesitated as to my next step. But there was 
the old farmhouse — and it invited me very tender- 
ly just then to return. I was not conquered yet, but 
would fight on. I turned, as if by instinct, toward 
Cambridgeport, the scene of my traffickings with 
the grocer. My uncle Clarke lived there, the 
uncle that had brought me on from New Orleans ; 
but I could not make up my mind to go to him, 
either. The family would laugh at me. No! I 
would get another place — but it would not be in a 
drug-store ! 

Then I had an inspiration. There was the 
grocer named Holmes ! Why not try him? I would. 
So I went to the store of Joseph A. Holmes, at 
the corner of Main Street and Brighton Eoad. To 
my eager inquiry, Mr. Holmes said : " You have 
come just in time. We want a boy." Then he 
asked me what wages I wanted. " Just enough to 
live on," I said. " You can live with us," he said ; 
" and I will give you one dollar a week." That 
meant $50 a year. It was a great sum to me. I 
began to work at once. 

This was the winter of '43-'44, and I was 
fourteen. My work was to drive the grocery 
wagon up to Old Cambridgeport, take orders, and 
fill them. I had to get up at four o'clock in the 

42 



SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE 

morning to look after the horse, just as I had done 
on the farm, and to get everything ready for the 
trip. I had the orders of the day before to fill and 
to deliver at the college. Besides, I had to work in 
the store after I came back from Old Cambridge- 
port. In the evening I had to look after the lamps, 
sweep out, put up the shutters, and do numberless 
other little things about the store. The store was 
closed at ten o^clock at night. Then I would put 
out the lights, which were old-fashioned oil lamps. 

It was a long day for a boy — or for a man. I 
worked eighteen hours every day. And the labor- 
ers in the Pennsylvania coal-mines are now strik- 
ing for an eight-hour day! I had six hours of 
night in which to go to bed and to find what sleep 
I could. This life continued for about two years. 
In that time I had learned to do almost everything 
that was to be done about a grocery store. I had 
really learned this in the first six months. 

One of my many little duties was to make paper 
bags. I had to cut the paper and paste it together. 
Another task was to take a hogshead of hams, put 
each ham in bagging, and sew it up. Then I had 
to whitewash each particular ham. That was a 
nice business! It went against my nature more 
than any other part of my manifold labors in the 
store. 

Mr. Holmes was a Baptist deacon, but the only 
thing about him to which my youthful taste ob- 
jected was that he chewed tobacco all the time. 
^ 43 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Yes, there was another objection. He insisted 
upon my joining the Bible class in his Sunday- 
school. This I would not do. I could not explain 
it all to him J but the Santa Claus matter had not 
yet worn out of my mind. 

One day at the grocery store, Mr. Holmes 
brought in an elderly gentleman and said to me: 
" George, I want you to take this gentleman " 
(naming him) " up to the college^ and walk about 
with him.'' The gentleman seemed to me to be 
about sixty years old. Mr. Holmes cautioned me 
about keeping him out of any danger, as he was 
not very well. " Don't talk to him," he said to me, 
" unless he wants to talk to you." 

The thing was like a holiday to me. I walked 
with him up to the college, and all around, as much 
as he wanted to; and it never occurred to me, in 
all the days I was with him in this way, to find out 
who he was, or to think about it at all. 

He was John Jacob Astor, Jr., eldest son of 
the founder of the great house of the Astors. He 
was practically an invalid. He was then in charge 
of a Mr. Dowse, who generally left him to the care 
of Mr. Holmes, and who, in turn, left him to me. 
After this, he came to New York, where he was 
taken in charge by his brother, William B. Astor. 



44 



CHAPTER ^ 

EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM 

Before I get away from my boyhood days, I 
want to say something about the manner of my 
rearing in the bosom of old New England Meth- 
odism. I was reared in the strictest ways of mo- 
rality, in accordance with the old system. Grand- 
mother told me that I must not swear, must not 
drink intoxicating liquors, must not lie, must not 
use tobacco in any form. It seemed to me she was 
stretching out the moral law a little, and that there 
were fifteen, instead of ten, commandments, in the 
religious scheme of Methodism. And each com- 
mandment was held up to me as an unfailing pre- 
cept that would make a man of me. I used to say 
to myself that I would be fifteen times a man, as 
I intended to keep them all. 

But while this training was proceeding, and I 
was being warned against drinking and using to- 
bacco, there were some strange inconsistencies 
going on side by side with the precepts. My old 
grandmother smoked what was known as " nigger- 
head " tobacco, in a little clay pipe. The pipes 

45 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

cost about a cent apiece. I used to cut up tMs to- 
bacco for her. But as she smoked, she lost no 
opportunity of impressing upon me the dreadful- 
ness of the tobacco habit. 

I made bold one day to ask her why it was that 
she smoked, and yet told me not to smoke. She 
touched herself in the right side, and said, " The 
doctor tells me to smoke for some trouble here." 
But she was a very lovely old lady, and I would 
never write or speak a word that could harm the 
dear memory of the mother of my mother. 

At this time, also, her father was living. I re- 
member the old gentleman now, in his red cap, then 
a wonder to me, but which afterward became very 
familiar in Constantinople and the East as the 
Turkish fez. He was very aged, being then well 
along in the eighties. Every night I used to go up 
to his room and make him a toddy. He always 
wanted me to mix this drink for him, as I had 
learned to make it exactly to his taste. He had the 
rare consistency never to say anything to me about 
the immorality of drinking, nor did I ever speak 
to him about the matter. But one day I asked my 
grandmother about this "toddy." She touched 
her left side, and said, "It is for something 
here." 

I could not understand it, but here were mys- 
terious " somethings " in my grandmother's right 
side, and in her father's left side, that nullified 
the Methodist religious system and set at naught 

46' 



EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM 

the additional commandments, " Thou shalt not 
drink," and " Thou shalt not smoke." 

But the scheme of morality proved a good thing 
for me, and served to guide me aright in all my 
wanderings about the world and up and down in it. 
I think it very good testimony to the soundness 
and virtue of my moral training that I have wan- 
dered around the world four times, have lived in 
every manner known to man, have been thrown 
with the most dissolute and the most reckless of 
mankind, and have passed through almost every 
vicissitude of fortune, and have never tasted a 
drop of intoxicating liquor, and have never 
smoked. I have kept all of the commandments — 
those of Sinai and those of the Methodists. 

In my period of wealth and prosperity, I have 
entertained thousands of men, have seen thousands 
drinking and drunken at my table — and under it; 
but I never touched a drop of my own wine or of 
the wine of others. I have paid a great deal of 
money for the purchase of all sorts of tobacco, 
and for all sorts of pipes — narghiles, hookas, chi- 
bouks — as presents for others ; but never touched 
tobacco myself in any way. I have been in every 
rat-hole of the world — but I never touched the 
rats. It is for these reasons that I am seventy- 
three years young, and am hale and strong to-day, 
and living my life over again like a youth once 
more. 

Years afterward, when I was lecturing, my 
47 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

cousin, George Pickering Bemis, ex-Mayor of Oma- 
ha, and my aunt Abbie and my cousin Abbie at- 
tended the one I delivered in Omaha, and all of 
them felt a little hurt by my allusions to the old 
Methodists, and to my grandmother and her father. 
Bemis wrote to me that they were horrified. But 
they forgot that what I said of the Methodists 
and of my ancestors was in their praise. I was not 
ridicuhng them, but extolling them. I told of these 
incidents of my childhood, because I was speaking 
of my childhood, and these were facts. One of 
the strictest commandments of old Methodism was 
to tell the truth. They were not satisfied with the 
mild negative of the Sinaitic commandment, " Thou 
shalt not lie." They added a positive decree, 
" Thou shalt speak the truth." That was all I was 
doing. I was telling the truth about my childhood 
and boyhood. I have never spoken anything but 
the truth in all my life. This, too, I owe to the 
early training in Methodist virtues and precepts, 
and to the example and counsel of my dear old 
grandmother. 

I could not join the Bible class, at the urgent 
request of the grocer, Mr. Holmes, because I could 
not see the necessity of God, and no one could ever 
explain to me the reason why there should be, or 
is, a God. I could never recognize the necessity. 
Morality and ethics I could see the necessity 
of, and the high and authoritative reason for; but 
religion never appealed to my intelligence or to 

48 



EAKLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM 

my emotions. The story of the Prodigal Son only 
taught me that to be a Christian one must do some- 
thing to be forgiven for, to repent of; and I could 
not see the strength of such an argument. The 
plain and sound " ethics " of Methodism, outside 
of " faith " and " belief," always seemed to me to 
be higher and better than this. 

I feel that in an autobiography I should say 
this much about my moral creed and principles. 
Later in life the Bible got me into much trouble, 
involved me in persecutions, and finally landed me 
in jail — all of which I shall refer to in due season. 

Children are born savages and cheats. It is 
only training that makes true and honest men and 
women of them. When a child of five and six, I 
slept with my aunt Alice, the one who was after- 
ward lost on the Lexington. One night I saw a 
fourpence in her pocket-book. When I saw that 
she was asleep, I got up quietly, went to her pock- 
et-book where it lay on the table and took the four- 
pence out of it. But I could not retain it. It 
seared into my conscience. Before she woke up, 
I went as quietly back to the purse and placed the 
fourpence exactly where I had found it. My Meth- 
odist training saved me. 

On another occasion, my grandmother took me 
to Watertown to buy me a suit of clothes. In the 
store I noticed, while my grandmother was talking 
with the clerk, a lovely knife in the show-case. I 
wanted it. All my boyish instincts went out to 

49 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

that knife. I had never had a knife, and was hun- 
gry for one. I looked around, with all the inherit- 
ed cunning of savage and barbarian and predatory- 
ancestors in a thousand forests and for a hundred 
centuries. No one was observing me. Quietly, 
stealthily, I went to the case. I lifted the top, 
took the beautiful knife, and put it in my pocket. 
It was done. I had the knife, and no one would 
ever be any wiser. I was safe with my spoil. But 
again my Methodist-drilled conscience awoke. It 
made me go back to the show-case and replace the 
stolen knife. I actually felt better — for a time. 

Then the appeal of nature came back stronger 
than before. I longed for the knife. There was 
no resisting the predatory impulse. Again I stole 
behind the counter, opened the case, took out the 
knife, and placed it securely in my pocket. Again 
it had been done without chance of detection. But 
again my Methodist-made conscience came to the 
fore. Again it saved me from being a thief. I 
went back to the case, and put the knife in its place, 
but with great reluctance. Still a third time I took 
the knife from the case and secreted it in my 
pocket, and again the Methodist conscience proved 
stronger than human nature, and I restored the 
treasure to its proper place. I was finally able to 
leave the store without the knife, and with a clean 
conscience. 

These are the only instances when I started to 
do an evil thing, and in both of them I did not 

50 



EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM 



go the full length, but restored the property I 
coveted. Since that time, and with these excep- 
tions, for the entire period of my life I have never 
cheated, stolen, or lied. And yet I have been in 
fifteen jails. For what? 

When I was clerk in Mr. Holmes's grocery 
store I was in charge of the money-drawer. I re- 
ceived no salary from Mr. Holmes, but took out 
the $1 a week that I was allowed, and kept an ac- 
count of it. I was trusted, and did not betray in 
the slightest degree this trust and confidence of 
my employer. Every cent that I took out of, or 
put into the cash-drawer was entered upon my ac- 
count-book, and I was ready at any and all times 
to show exactly how my account stood with the 
store. 



51 



CHAPTER VI 

IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

1844-1850 

The next change in my life, and the real begin- 
ning of my career as a business man, was soon to 
come. I had got as much out of the grocery store 
as it could give me, and was yearning for a change 
and a wider field of labor. 

One day a gentleman drove up to the store in 
a carriage drawn by an elegant team of horses, 
and asked if there was a boy there named Train. 
Mr. Holmes thereupon called to me, and said to 
the strange gentleman, " This is George Francis 
Train." He then told me that the stranger was 
Colonel Enoch Train, and that he wanted to speak 
to me. 

The first thing Colonel Train said was, " I am 
surprised to see you, George. I thought all your 
family were dead in New Orleans. Your father 
was a very dear friend of mine — and your mother, 
too." He said, as if repeating it to himself, like 
a sort of formula, " Oliver Train, merchant in 
Merchants' Eow." Then he continued : " He was 

52 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 



my cousin. But we had heard that you were all 
dead. Where have you been? " I told him where 
I had been living for the past ten years, with my 
grandmother at Waltham, and how my uncle 
Clarke had brought me back from New Orleans. 

After he had made a number of inquiries of me, 
and I had given him all the stock of information 
I had, Colonel Train drove back to Boston. I 
watched the retreating carriage, and brave and 
disturbing thoughts came to me. 

The following day I went to Boston. I had no 
very definite plan of action, but I knew that when 
the time and opportunity came I should find my 
way, as usual. And so I went directly to the great 
shipping house of Train & Co., at 37 Lewis Wharf. 
The big granite building seemed titanic to my 
eyes then, as if it contained the whole world of 
business and enterprise. When I went back to 
Boston years and years afterward, it seemed only 
a plain, ordinary affair. At first sight of it the 
place was simply ahead of and greater than any- 
thing I had seen. When I had outgrown it, it 
seemed small. 

\Mien I came up to the building, my purpose 
was at once clear. I walked in and asked to see 
Colonel Train. The colonel shook hands cordially, 
and said he was very glad to see me. " Where do 
I come in! " I asked. 

"Come in!" he almost gasped at this effron- 
tery. " Why, people don't come into a big ship- 

53 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

ping house like this in that way. Yon are too 
young." 

"I am growing older every day," I replied. 
" That is the reason I am here. I want to make 
my way in the world." " Well," said the colonel, 
smiling at me, " you come in to see me when you 
are seventeen years old." 

" That will be next year," I replied. " I am 
sixteen now. I might just as well begin this year 
— right away." He tried to put me off one way 
after another; but I was not to be got rid of. I 
was there, and I meant to stay. 

"I will come in to-morrow," I said. Then I 
left, quite content with myself and the turn my 
yenture had taken. Of the issue I had no doubt. 

Early on the following day, I went to the ship- 
ping office, and took my seat at one of the desks. 
I sat there and waited. After a little while. Colo- 
nel Train came in. He was astonished to see me 
sitting there, ready for work. 

" You here? " he stammered. " Have you left 
the grocery store? " "Yes, sir," I said; "I have 
learned everything there is to learn there and in 
fact had done so before I had been there six 
months. I want a bigger field to work in." 

"You don't mean to say you have come here 
without being invited?" "As I was not invited, 
that was about the only way for me to come," I 
said. " As I am here, I might as well stay." And 
I settled myself in the seat at the desk. 

54 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

Colonel Train looked at the bookkeeper sorely 
perplexed. But I saw that he rather admired my 
persistence and bravado. I had won the first trial 

of aiTQS. 

"Well," said he, after a while, turning again 
to the bookkeeper, " we shall see if we can find 
something for you to do." " I will find something 
to do," I said. He smiled cordially at this, and 
said : " I will make a man of you." " I will make 
a man of myself," I replied. 

Then the colonel asked Mr. Nazro, who had 
been the firm^s bookkeeper for many years, to try 
to find something for me to do. 

It so happened that the ship Anglo-Saxon had 
just arrived from Liverpool, Captain Joseph R. 
Gordon, with goods for 150 consignees. Mr. 
Nazro handed me the portage bill showing the 
amount to be collected from each of the 150 con- 
signees. The amounts were set down in English 
money, and Mr. Nazro asked me to put them into 
American, or Federal, money. I fancied he was 
setting me what would prove to be an impossible 
task, just to dispose of me for all time. But he 
blundered, if this was his purpose. I had had 
some experience of English money at the grocery 
store, having often to change it into American 
money. 

I coolly asked Mr. Nazro what was the pre- 
vailing rate of exchange, and he replied that it was 
$4.80 to the pound. " That is just 24 cents to the 

55 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

shilling, two cents to the penny,'' I said, and went 
to work. It was then noon. It would have taken 
some clerks a week to do the task ; but I had com- 
pleted it by six o'clock that afternoon. 

When I handed the list back to him, he asked, 
with an astonished air, if I had finished it. " You 
can see for yourself," I replied. " There it is, all 
made out properly and correctly." " How do you 
know it is right? ^' said he. "Because I have 
proved it," I replied. 

This little task decided my fate. Mr. Nazro 
told me the office hours were from eight until six, 
with the rest of the time, the evenings, all my own. 

The next morning I arrived at the office 
promptly, and asked Mr. Nazro what I was to do. 
He handed me a package of bills. I saw they were 
the bills upon which I had worked the day before, 
changing English to American currency. There 
were 150 of them. Each was to contain the amount 
that must be collected from each of the consignees. 
I at once set to work on this new task, and com- 
pleted it in less time than it had taken me to 
change the money. I went with the bills to Mr. 
Nazro, and asked what I was to do next. He gave 
me a collector's wallet into which to put the bills, 
and told me to go out and collect the amounts due. 
This was a staggerer, but I set about the diffi- 
cult undertaking without any feeling of discour- 
agement. 

At that time Boston was a strange city to me. 
56 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

It is true that I had lived on the edge of it for 
years ; but my ceaseless work at the grocery store 
had kept me from roaming over the town and 
learning anything about it. The only section I 
was at all familiar with was the neighborhood of 
the old Quincy Market, to which I had driven so 
many wagon-loads of garden and farm " truck " 
in my boyhood days. I was as green as a genuine 
countryman who had come to town for the first 
time in his life. I knew not a soul in the city. 
But off I started, nothing abashed, with the great 
wallet of bills under my arm. I intended to suc- 
ceed at this task. 

I soon picked out my course through the city. 
I worked through street after street, and collected 
as I went. I did not stop, but kept steadily on, 
and in the afternoon found myself at the end of 
the list. I had collected nearly every bill. 

I returned to the office and handed the wallet 
and money to Mr. Nazro. Again he was aston- 
ished. He asked if I had collected all the bills, 
and when I told him nearly all, he asked me for the 
list. I said I had made out none, as it was not 
necessary. There was all the money; he could 
count it, and compare with the list on his books. 
He was very much surprised, but counted the 
money, and found it correct to a cent. I did not 
need a list, I told him, because I could carry the 
whole thing in my head. 

From that day to this I have done everything 
57 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I have undertaken in my own way, and have found 
that it was the best way — at least, for me. 

My next duty was to see that every one of the 
150 consignees received the goods that were billed 
to him. This gave me opportunity for meeting a 
large number of important persons. Among the 
rest, I met NathanielP. Banks, who was a Cus- 
tom-House official at the time, and the great writer, 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom I saw in the Custom- 
House on a visit from Salem. He had been ap- 
pointed by President Polk. Of course I knew 
nothing about him at the time, although he was 
then writing his greatest work, and perhaps was 
casting in his mind The Scarlet Letter. He had 
only just begun to be famous — an interesting fact 
enough, but one I did not learn till long after- 
ward. He seemed very unassuming, and not in 
very affluent circumstances. I suppose his salary 
from the Government at the time was not more 
than $1,000 a year. 

My life in the old shipping house of Train & 
Co., in Boston, lasted some four years. The 
first vessel that came in, after I began working 
with the company, was the Joshua Bates, named 
after the American partner of the famous house 
of the Barings. It was of 400 tons, quite a big 
ship for the time. The next was the Washington 
Irving, 500 tons; and the third was the Anglo- 
Saxon, the bills of which, on a previous voyage, 
I had made out in my trial under Mr. Nazro. The 

58 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

Anglo-Saxon was lost the following year — this 
was in ^46 — off Cape Sable, with several passen- 
gers, the captain and crew escaping. After this 
the Anglo-American came in, then the Parliament, 
the Ocean Monarch, and the Staffordshire. All of 
these were famous ships in their day. 

In '48, I was at the pier one day on the look- 
out for the Ocean Monarch. Although the tele- 
graph had been established in '44, it had not been 
brought from Nova Scotia to Boston, and we had 
only the semaphore to use for signaling. When 
a ship entered the harbor, the captain would take 
a speaking-trumpet and, standing on the bridge, 
shout out the most interesting or important tidings 
so that the news would get into the city before 
the ship was docked. The Persia was also due, 
with Captain Judkins, and it came in ahead of the 
Ocean Monarch. Some three or four thousand 
persons were on the pier waiting eagerly for the 
captain's news. I was at the end of the pier, and 
saw Captain Judkins place the trumpet to his lips, 
and heard him shout the tidings. And this is what 
I heard; 

^' The Ocean Monarch was burned off Orm's 
Head. Four hundred passengers burned or 
drowned. Captain Murdoch taken off of a spar 
by Tom Littledale's yacht. A steamer going to 
Ireland passed by, and refused to offer assist- 
ance. Complete wreck, and complete loss." 

The captain shouted hoarsely, like a sentence 
G 59 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of doom from the " last trmnp." Every one was 
stunned. The scene was indescribable, both the 
dead silence with which the dreadful tidings were 
received, and the wild excitement that soon burst 
forth. 

I took advantage of the awed hush of the peo- 
ple, and rushed toward the street end of the pier. 
There I leaped on my horse that was waiting for 
me, and galloped off. Crossing the ferry, I went 
madly through Commercial Street, up State 
Street, and to the Merchants' Exchange. There 
I mounted a chair, and amid a great hush, shouted 
out the tidings, word for word, and in almost the 
exact intonation the captain had used. 

One day a gentleman, looking like a farmer, 
came into the office and asked to see Mr. Train. 
I remember that it was the 5th of October, '47. 
I replied to his question that my name was Train. 
" I mean the old gentleman," he said. 

I told him that Colonel Train was out of the 
office at the time, but that as I had charge of the 
ships, I might be able to attend to his business. 
But I added that I was in a hurry, as the Wash- 
ington Irving was to sail in an hour. " That is 
just what I am here for," said he. " I want to sail 
on that ship ; I want passage for England." 

I told him there was one state-room left, and 
that he could have both berths for the price of one 
— $75, but that he must get aboard in great haste, 
as everything was ready and the ship waiting for 

^60 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

final orders. He said he was ready, and I started 
to fill up a passenger slip. " What is your 
name ? " I asked. " Ralph Waldo Emerson," he 
replied. 

Then he took out of his pocket an old wallet, 
with twine wrapped around it four or five times, 
opened it carefully, and counted out $75. I could 
not wait to see whether it was correct, but threw it 
in the drawer, and took him on board. 

Mr. Emerson was then starting on his famous 
visit to England, during which he was to visit 
Carlyle. He afterward mentioned the occurrence 
in his English Traits, where he said: "I took 
my berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving.'* 
From the moment when I thus met Emerson 
for the second time, I began to take great in- 
terest in him, read him carefully, and have con- 
tinued to read him throughout my life. He has 
had more influence upon me than any other man 
in the world. 

We once chartered the ship Franklin to take 
a cargo of tar, pitch, and turpentine from Wil- 
mington, N. C, consigned to the Baring Brothers, 
London, and return with a cargo of freight. She 
was about due from England, thirty-five days hav- 
ing elapsed since she had started to return. By 
this time I had been placed in charge of all the 
shipping, and I was on the lookout for the Frank- 
lin. One day the news came by semaphore that a 
large ship had been wrecked just off the light- 

61 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

housej while coming into Boston harbor. It was 
not known what ship it was. The sender of the 
message asked if Train & Co. had a ship due. I 
thought at once it might be the Franklin, making 
a somewhat faster passage than we had expected. 

The next day some of the wreckage came into 
the harbor, and, strangely enough, a piece of the 
floating timbers bore the name Franklin on it. I 
was at the pier when this discovery was made, and 
rushed at once to the insurance office to see 
whether the policy covering the freight had been 
arranged. It was all right. On the following 
day, to the astonishment of all Boston, the valise 
of one of the officers of the Franklin was washed 
ashore at Nantasket. In it were many letters, 
and among them were instructions telling how " to 
sink the vessel off the lighthouse, as she was fully 
insured/* When the ship went down the captain 
was drowned with the rest of the crew and the pas- 
sengers. 

I saw at once that here was a case of barratry 
of the master, and that the letter would jeopardize 
the whole affair of the insurance. It was a mat- 
ter that needed prompt and able legal work. I 
hastened to the office of Eufus Choate, the most 
famous lawyer in New England of that time. I 
hurriedly explained to Mr. Choate that we had 
lost a ship, and needed a lawyer. " Will you ac- 
cept a retainer of $500?" I added. He accepted 
it at once, and turned to his desk to write out a re- 

62 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

ceipt. I said there was no necessity for a receipt, 
as the check would be receipt enough, and hurried 
away. 

I then went directly across the street to the 
office of Daniel Webster, who was then practising 
law in Boston. I was particularly anxious to have 
Mr. Webster retained. I remember now the roar 
of his great, deep voice as he responded to my 
knock with a " Come in " that was like a battle 
peal. And I recall well the picture of the great 
man, as I saw him for the first time. He sat at 
his flat desk, a magnificent example of manhood, 
his massive head set squarely and solidly upon his 
shoulders. He did not have very much business 
in those days, and the clients that found a way to 
his office were few. 

" Mr. Webster," I said, " we want your services 
in a very important case. Will you accept this as 
a retainer?" I handed him a check for $1,000. 
He accepted it very promptly, and it seemed to 
me at the time that the check loomed large to him. 
Such sums came seldom. 

One incident in the trial of the case impressed 
me deeply. It was the masterly manner in which 
Mr. Choate examined the witnesses. He had the 
reputation of being the most effective cross-exam- 
iner in New England. Before him, in the witness- 
box, stood one of the owners. Mr. Choate wanted 
to confuse him in his testimony as to the way in 
which he had done a certain thing. He began by 

63 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

asking the longest and most complex question that 
I ever heard. It wound all around the case, and 
straggled through every street in Boston. " You 
say/^ Mr. Choate began, "you say that you did 
so and so, that you went to such and such a place, 
that after this you did so and so, and thus and so," 
and he kept on asking him if after doing this and 
that if such and such was not the case, until there 
was no answering the question, or understand- 
ing it. 

But Mr. Choate had tackled the wrong man for 
once. The man was an Irishman, and the most 
nonchalant person I ever saw. Nothing seemed 
to confuse him. While Mr. Choate was firing his 
complicated questions at him, he sat perfectly un- 
moved, unshaken. He seemed to be taking it all 
in. Then when the astute lawyer had finished, the 
witness looked at him quietly, and said : " Mr. 
Choate, will yez be after rapatin' that again ? " 

Bar and bench and spectators broke into roars 
of laughter. For once Mr. Choate was confused. 
But we won the case, as was to be expected, thanks 
to our matchless array of legal ability. 

We had two ships engaged in making what was 
known as " the triangular run " — from Boston to 
New Orleans, New Orleans to Liverpool, and Liv- 
erpool back to Boston. They were the St. Peters- 
burg, built in '40 for the cotton trade, and having 
for a figurehead the head and shoulders of the Em- 
peror Nicholas; and the Governor Davis, named 

64 



' ( 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

for the governor of the Bay State, whose son is 
now living at Newport. Once we were expecting 
the Governor Davis to arrive at New Orleans, 
where the freight rates were higher than they had 
been in many years — three farthings the pound. 
The vessel was to be loaded with cotton for Liver- 
pool. We were elated at the prospect of big prof- 
its, when a telegram came from our agent, Levi H. 
Gale, at New Orleans. It read : " The Governor 
Davis is burned up." 

Our hearts sank, A fortune had been lost, or 
at least the opportunity to make one. I went im- 
mediately to the insurance office to see that the 
policies were all right, and found them in good 
shape. Then it occurred to me that there might 
be a possibility of error in the message. Eager 
with my thought, I rushed to the telegraph office 
and asked to have the message repeated carefully, 
no matter what it might cost. After awhile there 
came back what had been a terrifying message in 
this new form: "The Governor Davis is bound 
up." The vessel was safe, and so were our profits. 

My connection with the packet lines brought 
me into contact with many prominent business 
men of Boston. Very often I was able to do some 
little thing for them, and once a very amusing in- 
cident occurred in connection with the attempt of 
Mr. Milton, of the firm of Milton, Cushman & Co., 
to get some English pigs for breeding purposes. 
I had charge of the catering for our vessels, and 

65 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

made the purchases. Mr. Milton asked me to get 
him some English pigs, and I promised that we 
would bring some over by the very next ship. As 
the vessels were out for quite a time, we fre- 
quently carried live animals aboard for food, and 
usually hogs and pigs. It so happened that on 
this particular trip, when going east, one of the 
sows gave birth to a litter of pigs. They were 
taken to Liverpool. By some mistake they were 
brought back and delivered to Mr. Milton. He 
prized them very highly, until later on he discov- 
ered that they were American pigs, bom under 
the American flag on the high seas. The mistake 
subjected him to much good-natured chaffing. No 
one forgot the incident during the old gentleman's 
life. 

Of course, there was always present the temp- 
tation to do a little business on my own account, 
during my connection with the Train Packet Lines. 
Indeed, the desire to do this, and the experience I 
got in it, were the foundations of my subsequent 
business success. It was inevitable that I should 
have undertakings of my own. 

My first speculation was the shipment of a 
cargo of Danvers onions to Liverpool in consign- 
ment of Baring Brothers. I was eager to have my 
first venture turn out a success. The onions were 
packed carefully in barrels, and I saw myself that 
they were in the best condition before they were 
shipped. I felt as if I had taken every precaution, 

66 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 



and that I was assured of a pretty good thing. 
Then came the news from England : " Onions ar- 
rived ; not in good order. Debit, £3 17s. 6d." 

That was the disappointing result of my first 
venture. I was a loser. Years afterward, when 
I was launching shipping lines between Australia 
and America, I cited this little experience of mine 
as an example of what might be expected by many 
who sent cargoes to the other end of the world. 

My second venture proved more successful. 
This was the shipping of fish on ice to New Or- 
leans. It paid me well. But my real career as a 
shipper started in quite another and different way. 
I am ashamed to confess how I began this career, 
which made me a shipper of cargoes to the other 
end of the earth. But as I was too ignorant at 
the time to know much better, or, indeed, to give 
any thought at all to the matter, I shall, in the in- 
terest of truth, make a full confession. I became 
a smuggler of opium into China! 

It happened in this way. One of our captains, 
who was about to start with a cargo for the 
Orient, asked me if I did not want to send over 
something for sale, as he thought a good 
profit might be made on a shipment of something 
in demand there. " \Vhat would be a good thing 
to send! " I asked. " Opium," said he laconically. 

Opium meant nothing to me then. I had never 
thought of it in any way other than as a market- 
able product and an object in cargoes. So I went 

67 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

to Hensliaw's, in Boston, and got three tins of 
opium, the best he had. This I placed in charge of 
the captain, and he smuggled it into China, and 
got a good price for it, to the profit of himself 
and me. 

But the smuggling did not end there. I had 
instructed him to lay in a supply of curios, silks, 
and other oriental things, and bring them to Bos- 
ton. This part of the venture was as successful 
as the first, and I made quite a snug little sum. It 
was my first considerable profit. That was in 
'46-'47. 

I do not think any one in good standing in 
business has an idea now of cheating the Govern- 
ment out of tariff duties. I had not, at that 
time, the slightest idea that I was doing wrong. 
I felt entirely innocent of defrauding two govern- 
ments, and did not realize that I was a smuggler. 
The wrong of the transaction I fully understood 
afterward. 

But I fear that the moral sense as to smug- 
gling, to use an ugly term, was not so delicate in 
those days. Even patriotic and good men thought 
that it was not very bad to bring in articles from 
Europe and the Orient without stopping to pay the 
duty levied by the United States. There was no 
systematic attempt to defraud the Government. 
There was just no thought at all, except to get in 
a few luxuries upon which it did not seem worth 
while to pay the customs dues. I can recall a few 

68 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

examples of this lax way of treating the tariff 
regulations. They were the acts of men of great 
social and business prominence. If done to-day, 
they would shock the whole country — even the 
Democratic and low tariff, or no tariff, part of it. 

One day a banker, who was a famous figure in 
Boston, a leader in the world of business, asked 
me if I could not bring over for him some silver 
he had ordered sent to the Train offices in Liver- 
pool. I consented. Shortly after this, the steward 
of the Ocean Monarch told me he had a very heavy 
package addressed to " George Francis Train." I 
directed him to bring it into the office. Then I saw 
that the heavy package was addressed, in the cor- 
ner, from the shippers to this famous Boston 
banker. And so, without any intent to defraud 
the Government on my part, and, I suppose, with- 
out any intent on the part of the great banker to 
do a distinctly wrong act, we had actually con- 
spired to smuggle in some exquisite silver plate 
for the richest banker in New England, to save a 
few dollars' tariff duty! 

Once while I was in Paris, in '50, I wanted 
to buy some presents for the young lady to whom 
I was engaged to be married — Miss Davis — who 
was then living in Louisville, Ky. I called at the 
Paris office of a famous American firm of jewel- 
ers, and the resident agent took me to a magnifi- 
cent establishment, where I saw the wealth of a 
world in gems. 

69 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

An amusing tiling happened, which I shall re- 
late before I complete the story of this smug- 
gling incident. I asked at once to see the most 
beautiful things the shop contained, the latest, and 
most charming. Imagine my surprise and horror 
when the young girl who was showing me around 
the shop exhibited to me a package of pictures 
that would have subjected me to immediate arrest 
and incarceration had they been found on my per- 
son in this city. She explained to me that this was 
the part of the business in her charge, and that 
she thought, as I was an American and new to 
Paris, I wanted to get hold of some startling pic- 
tures to carry back to the United States. 

Passing through this temptation unscathed, I 
finally got to the jewels and gems of all sorts, and 
selected some for my betrothed. I bought about 
$1,000 worth. Suddenly the agent of an American 
house turned on me and said he was thinking of 
sending a present to his firm in New York, and 
asked if I would not take charge of it and deliver 
it, or have it delivered direct. Of course I did not 
know what this meant — that he wanted me to get a 
package of jewels to his firm without paying the 
tariff duty. I consented, however, before I went 
into the ethical question, and brought over, per- 
haps, a package of splendid and costly diamonds 
for one of the richest houses in the world. 

While in charge of the ships of the house in 
Boston I had a little yacht, called The Sea Witch, 

70 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

that I used in boarding vessels in the harbor. One 
day there arrived a very great man, in my opinion 
a tower of strength in finance — Thomas Baring, 
afterward Lord Revelstoke, who succeeded Lord 
Ashburton as the representative of England in 
this country. I had prepared to take him on a trip 
around the harbor, and everything was ready for 
the sail the following day, when he was suddenly 
called to Washington, and sent me a note which 
read as follows : 

" Dear Mr. Train : 

"As I leave for Washington in the morning, 
I regret that it will not be possible for me to go 
with you on The Sea Witch to see Boston harbor. 
I remember with pleasure the canvasback ducks 
that you sent to me at London, and which gave me 
and my friends so much pleasure. I hope to see 
you on my return. 

" Thomas Baring." 

The great development of the clippers, the 
boats that soon made the reputation of the United 
States on the seas, was due chiefly to the discovery 
of gold in California. This made it necessary to 
send a great number of ships to the Pacific coast, 
and I saw that it was essential to the success of the 
trade to send large boats that could make profits 
on this long voyage. 

Gold was discovered in '48. At that time our 
71 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

packets had attained to the size of only 800 tons. 
They were considered large boats at the time, but 
now would be called mere tubs. I saw that if we 
wanted to enter the trade with the Pacific we 
should have to get larger ships. Our first packets 
had been built at East Boston by Donald Mackay: 
the Joshua Bates, 400 tons; the Washington Irv- 
ing, 500 tons ; the Anglo-Saxon, 600 tons ; the An- 
glo-American, 700 tons; the Ocean Monarch, 800 
tons. In a few years we had enlarged the packet 
clipper from a vessel of 400 tons to one of 800 
tons, or twice the size. The Ocean Monarch was 
regarded as a veritable monster of the seas. 

When the gold-fever was setting the country 
frantic, and every one, apparently, wanted to go 
to California, I said to Mackay : " I want a big 
ship, one that will be larger than the Ocean Mon- 
arch." Mackay replied, " Two hundred tons big- 
ger?" "No," said I, "I want a ship of 2,000 
tons." Mackay was one of those men who merely 
ask what is needed. He said he would build the 
sort of ship I wanted. " I shall call her the Fly- 
ing Cloud," I said. This is the history of that 
famous ship, destined to make a new era in ship- 
building all over the world. 

Longfellow sent me a copy of his poem, The 
Building of the Ship, which he had written to com- 
memorate the construction of a much smaller ves- 
sel. Not only ship-builders, but the whole world, 
was talking of the Flying Cloud. Her appearance 

72 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

in the world of commerce was a great historic 
event. 

No sooner was the Flying Cloud built than 
many ship-owners wanted to buy her. Among 
others, the house of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., of 
the Swallow-Tail Line, of Liverpool, asked what 
we would take for her. I replied that I wanted 
$90,000, which meant a handsome profit. The 
answer came back immediately, " We will take 
her." We sent the vessel to New York under 
Captain Cressey, while I went on by railway. 
There I closed the sale, and the proudest moment 
of my life, up to that time, was when I received a 
check from Moses H. Grinnell, the New York head 
of the house, for $90,000. 

The Flying Cloud was sent from New York to 
San Francisco, and made the passage in eighty- 
six days, with a full cargo of freight and passen- 
gers, paying for herself in that single voyage out 
and back. Her record has not been beaten by any 
sailing ship in the fifty-three years that have since 
elapsed. 

The building of this vessel was a tremendous 
leap f or^^ard in ship-building ; but I was not satis- 
fied. I told Mackay that I wanted a still larger 
ship. He said he could build it. And so we began 
another vessel that was to outstrip in size and 
capacity the great Flying Cloud. 

I was desirous to name this ship the Enoch 
Train, in honor of the head of the Boston house, 

73 



MY LIFE m MAISTY STATES 

and had said as much to Duncan MacLane, who 
was the marine reporter for the Boston Post. 
MacLane had usually written a column for his 
paper on the launching of our ships. He wanted 
to have something to write about the new vessel. 
I told him the story of Colonel Train's life, and 
that we were going to christen the new vessel with 
his name. I did not consult Colonel Train, think- 
ing that, of course, it was all right. 

The Post published a long account of the ship, 
and gave the name as the Enoch Train. When I 
went down to the office that morning Colonel 
Train had not yet arrived, but he soon came in, 
walking straight as a gun-barrel, and seeming to 
be a little stiff. " Did you see the Post this morn- 
ing?" I asked. "Premature," he replied. That 
was all he said. He would not discuss the matter. 
I was nettled that he did not appreciate the honor 
I thought I was conferring on him. It was not 
for nothing that a man's name should be borne 
by the greatest vessel on the seas. I said to my- 
self that the name should be changed at once. The 
ship was to be of 2,200 tons burden, larger than 
the Flying Cloud and the Staffordshire, both of 
2,000 tons, and I decided to call her the Sovereign 
of the Seas. 

The news that we were building a still bigger 
ship was rapidly circulated throughout the world. 
Many shipping lines wanted to buy her before she 
was off the ways. Despatches from New York 

74 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

shipping lines making inquiry as to price came 
almost daily. I invariably replied that we would 
take $130,000. But this was a little too stiff a 
price at that time, although the Flying Cloud had 
paid for herself in a single trip. I finally sold her 
to Berren Roosen, Jr., of Hamburg, Germany, 
through the brokers Funch & Menkier, of New 
York, for $110,000. She was entered in my name, 
although I was at the time only nineteen years of 
age. I was quite proud to have the greatest ves- 
sel then afloat on any water associated with my 
name. She was sent to Liverpool. 

The California business had grown steadily, 
and the house of Train had taken a leading part in 
it. One of the biggest of our ships was built ex- 
pressly for it, and employed on the long run from 
Boston to San Francisco. This was the Stafford- 
shire, which we had named for the great potteries 
in England from which we got so much of our im- 
port freight. She was of the same size and ton- 
nage as the Flying Cloud — 2,000 tons. We sent 
her to California on her first trip under Captain 
Richardson, full of freight and passengers. There 
were three hundred passengers, each paying $300 
for the trip around the Horn. This brought us in 
$90,000, completely paying for the cost of building 
and equipping, with cash in hand, before she 
sailed. 

The Flying Cloud and the Staffordshire were 
followed by about forty fast clippers during the 
7 75 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

great gold-fever of '49. I was still in my teens, 
and consider it not an insignificant thing to have 
accomplished the initiation of this magnificent 
clipper service which revolutionized sailing ves- 
sels all over the world, and gave to America the 
reputation for building the fastest ships on the 
seas. 

When the California business first opened up, 
I was bent upon going to the Golden Horn myself. 
I felt that there was to be a great development in 
trade and permanent business there, and wanted 
to " get in on the ground floor." But this was not 
to be, and my destiny detained me at Boston to 
take my share in the building of fast clippers and 
in developing the trade from the Atlantic side of 
the continent. I saw that MacKondray & Co., and 
Flint, Peabody & Co., who went to California about 
this time, were making fortunes out of commis- 
sions. I also saw men go there later to become 
millionaires in a few years — ^men like John W- 
Mackay, the pioneer, who died recently in London, 
worth somewhere approximating $100,000,000, 
most of it taken out of the Comstock Lode, the last 
of the "Big Four "— Mackay, Flood, Fair, and 
O'Brien — ;all of whom are dead. But my fortunes 
led in another direction. I was to go East, and 
not West. 

In connection with the clipper service to Cali- 
fornia, I should mention here the beginning of the 
Irish immigration to this country, which started at 

76 



IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 

the time of the gold-fever. I saw that this coun- 
try was very sparsely populated, that there were 
vast areas entirely unoccupied, and that there was 
not only room, but need, for more people. I also 
had an eye to increasing our own business, as our 
ships were returning from Liverpool with very 
few passengers. In casting about in my mind to 
create business, it occurred to me that the Irish, 
who were particularly restive and desirous of 
coming to America, might be turned into passen- 
gers for our boats and into settlers of our waste 
places. 

My first step was to engage the services of as 
many Irish 'longshoremen and stevedores as pos- 
sible. These were always talking of their friends 
in Ireland, and their friends in the old country 
were asking them for information about the 
United States. I got the 'longshoremen and steve- 
dores to scatter throughout Ireland information 
about this country and about the way to get here. 
I then set to work to arrange for giving to the 
poor Irish immigrants a cheap and convenient 
means of passage. 

I invented the prepaid passenger certificate, 
and also the small one-pound (English money) 
bill of exchange. To disseminate information 
about the plan, I had inserted in the Boston Pilot, 
the Catholic organ of the day, the following ad- 
vertisement, it being a letter from the Catholic 
archbishop : 

77 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" The Boston and Liverpool Packet Line of 
Enoch Train & Co. have arranged to issue prepaid 
passenger. certificates and small bills of exchange 
for one pound and upward. This firm is highly 
respectable, and has established agencies through- 
out Ireland for the benefit of Irish immigrants. — 
f FiTZPATRiCK, Archbishop of Boston." 

This advertisement, and this indorsement from 
a high Catholic authority, gave a marked impetus 
to the flow of Irish immigrants into America. 



78 



CHAPTER VII 

A VACATION TOUR 

1850 

In '50 it was decided that I should go to 
Liverpool to take charge of the house there. I 
asked Colonel Train if I could not first have a 
holiday, so that I might see a little of my own 
country. He told me to take two months, and to 
see as much as I could in that time. My ship was 
scheduled to sail July 25, '50. This was the only 
holiday I had had in four years. 

I started for New York. After a brief stay 
there, I went to Cape May. My recollections of 
that place, which was then the great resort of the 
Atlantic coast, include a famous score I made in 
rolling ten-pins. This game was my forte, and I 
remember that I defeated a party of Philadel- 
phians, scoring strike after strike, and left my 
score, 290, marked up on the wall. It stood un- 
rivaled for years. 

I hurried on to Washington from Cape May. 
The trip was then made by boat, rail, and stage. 
As soon as I reached Washington, I called on Dan- 

79 



MY LIFE m MAISIY STATES 

iel Webster, then Secretary of State. I was shown 
into his office, gave him news of New England, 
and said that every one was discussing his great 
speech of the 7th of March of that year. He looked 
at me inquiringly. " Some are hostile toward 
your sentiments," I said; "but most of the 
people are with you." " They are talking about 
it, are they?" This was the only comment he 
made. 

Afterward he introduced me to his wife, Mrs. 
Leroy Webster, and asked if I would like to meet 
the President. I was delighted, and said so. " Just 
wait a moment," he said, and sat down at his desk, 
took a quill pen and wrote on a sheet of blue paper, 
nearly a foot square, " To the President of the 
United States, introducing a young friend of mine 
from Boston, George Francis Train, shipping 
merchant, who merely wishes to pay his respects 
to the president. — Daniel Webster." The large 
writing covered almost the whole page. I thanked 
him, and started at once for the White House. 

On arriving there, I was at once ushered into 
the presence of General Taylor, who sat at his 
desk. The presidential feet rested on another 
chair. I begged him not to rise, but to let me feel 
at home, and handed him the letter from Mr. 
Webster. 

At his request, I seated myself opposite him, 
and from this point of vantage made a hurried 
study of his appearance. He wore a shirt that was 

80 



A VACATION TOUR 



formerly white, but which then looked like the map 
of Mexico after the battle of Buena Vista. It was 
spotted and spattered with tobacco juice. 

Directly behind me, as I was soon made aware, 
was a cuspidor, toward which the President turned 
the flow of tobacco juice. I was in mortal terror, 
but I soon saw there was no danger. With as un- 
erring an aim as the famous spitter on the boat 
in Dickens's American Notes, he never missed the 
cuspidor once, or put my person in jeopardy. 

My conversation — because, I suppose, it was 
new to him — interested him, and he would not let 
me go for half an hour. I told him the news of 
New England, and about my journey to Liverpool 
and its object. This particularly interested him, 
and he asked me a hundred questions about the 
shipping business and the prospects of developing 
trade with England. 

As I was about to leave, I said to him that I 
prized very highly the letter from Mr. Webster,, 
and should be very glad to be able to keep it ; " and 
I should prize it still more highly, Mr. President, 
if you would add your autograph to it." "Cer- 
tainly," he replied, and then took up a quill pen, 
and wrote " Z. Taylor." He courteously asked me 
to call to see him again before I left for England. 

From the White House, I went direct to the 
National Hotel, where I asked to see Mr. Clay. 
I was shown up to his room, and soon stood in the 
presence of the great Southern orator. I observed 

81 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

that his shirt also bore the same marks as that of 
the President — stained and smeared with tobacco 
juice. 

I told him that I was about to start for Eng- 
land, and that, as I had a letter signed by Mr. 
Webster and the President, I should like to add his 
signature also. "I believe that two signatures 
are usually necessary on Mr. Webster's paper," 
said Mr. Clay with a smile. He then added his 
autograph to the paper. 

Before leaving for Liverpool, I visited Mount 
Vernon, of course, while in Washington, saw the 
Georgetown Convent, and, indeed, everything of 
interest in th« capital at that time. Then I went 
back to New York and up the Hudson to West 
Point. 

My visit to West Point was especially pleasant. 
I comraded with the cadets, who invited me to 
sleep in their tent on the campus. Among the 
young fellows there at the time, who was very 
pleasant and friendly, was Alfred H. Terry, after- 
ward one of the most distinguished of our officers. 
I attended the cadets' ball at Cozzens's Hotel, 
messed with them, and entered into all of their 
sports and daily routine. I was astonished to no- 
tice that in the morning the roar of the gun did not 
disturb their slumbers, although it shook me from 
sleep. But the lightest tap of the drum aroused 
them instantly. It was force of habit, which, I 
was to learn later, enables men to sleep amid the 

82 



A VACATION TOUR 



roar of artillery on the battlefield, or amid the 
howling of storms on the ocean. In sleep, as in 
our waking hours, the trained and disciplined mind 
hears what it wants to hear. 

From West Point I went on to Saratoga 
Springs. It was my first visit to these famous 
springs, and I enjoyed it immensely. On the boat 
up the Hudson I met a beautiful lady, Mrs. Carle- 
ton, who was with her sister. Mrs. Carleton was 
the wife of a wealthy New York merchant, who 
had a villa on Staten Island. I stopped at Mar- 
vin's United States Hotel. This was fifty-two 
years ago, and the hotel is still there, while Mar- 
vin, who entertained me more than half a century 
ago, died last year, his age somewhere in the nine- 
ties. I enjoyed every moment of my stay at Sara- 
toga, for I had never seen anything of social life, 
and it was all new and delightful. The enormous 
caravansary, with its throngs of guests, its never- 
ceasing round of gaiety, and its own liberal life, 
entranced me. Manners seemed less formal then 
at the famous spa, and the ladies were pleased to 
meet any one in the most unconventional and 
charming way. 

As I say, I was very unsophisticated. I knew 
little or nothing of the " great world," and I was 
completely horrified one evening when one of the 
ladies said to me in a whisper : " Can you not get 
me a glass of brandy ! " I had never touched a 
drop of brandy, whisky, or even wine, and to have 

83 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

this beautifully dressed and refined lady ask me 
for a glass of brandy was a decided shock to me. 
I understand that now, however, it is not very 
uncommon for ladies to drink wine, whisky, and 
brandy. 

I have seen it stated in the papers recently that 
the waters at Saratoga have the effect of lessening 
thirst for more ardent waters of a spirituous 
nature. I did not happen to observe any such 
effect of the waters when I was there a half cen- 
tury ago. Drinking was quite general, and cer- 
tainly little restraint seemed to be practised. 

I found in society, as elsewhere in the greater 
affairs of life, that leadership was wanting. Peo- 
ple stood by and waited for some one to take the 
initiative. One evening one of the ladies said to 
me that the ball had not been arranged for. I 
asked what ball, and she said the regular season 
ball. For some reason, it had not been arranged 
by the hotel people, and no one seemed disposed 
to take hold of it. I said, " It should be arranged 
immediately.'* I saw a few of the leaders, talked 
it over with them, and got them together. We 
brought off the ball — my first experience in these 
deep waters of social life — ^with great success. I 
had then been in Saratoga just two days. While 
I was there I had the honor of meeting the social 
leader of Boston, Mrs. Harrison Grey Otis, and 
the social leader of Philadelphia, Mrs. Eush. 
There were also present at the Springs many rep- 

84 



A VACATION TOUR 



resentatives of the most prominent families in the 
social life of New York. 

I saw in Saratoga the first "gambling hell" 
that I had ever seen, and I was so green about such 
things — another tribute to my dear old Pickering 
grandmother and New England Methodism — that 
I did not know what a " gambling hell " was when 
asked if I should like to see one. While I possess 
an inquisitive nature, I have found it a good rule 
not to ask too many questions, until you have tried 
to find out things without betraying your igno- 
rance. I went to the "hell," and was properly 
shocked. The scene suggested to me the gaming 
at Monte Carlo. I saw a number of men sitting 
around a table playing as intently as if their lives 
depended upon the fall of a card. 

My attention was attracted toward a young 
man, apparently of about twenty-five, who was in 
a desperate plight. Agony was visibly graved in 
every feature and in every line of his face. I 
asked who he was, and heard the name of a dis- 
tinguished family of northern New York. " What 
is the matter with him!" I asked. My cicerone 
seemed astonished at my stupendous ignorance. 
" Why, can you not see they are * going through ' 
himt " he said in turn. The expressive term was 
sufficient even for my unsophisticated mind. It 
told the whole story, like a " scare-head " in a 
" yellow " newspaper. 

Then I turned from the victim to the predatory 
85 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

players about him. Wlio were they? To my sur- 
prise, the names were those of men famous the 
world over as bankers, merchants, and financiers. 
There was one man that especially interested me. 
It was the American representative of an English 
house whose commercial paper our house frequent- 
ly used. I said to myself, " I will cut his name 
from our list," and I did — for a time. I learned 
afterward that banking was only one form of 
gambling. Great financiers are often clever game- 
sters — players for desperate stakes, but infinitely 
better players than their victims. This world of 
finance is a great Monte Carlo. It was vain to 
entertain a prejudice against only one of the 
players. 

It was now necessary for me to hurry back to 
Boston in order to catch the Parliament, on which 
I had already engaged passage. But before leav- 
ing America, I wanted to see something of Canada, 
and resolved upon a rapid trip to Montreal, espe- 
cially as I found that I could return to New York 
that way almost as quickly as to go across the 
State. I went on to Niagara, and then sailed for 
Montreal, and had the novel experience of shoot- 
ing La Chine Eapids, an Indian piloting the boat. 
This was a great thing in those days, and I was 
amazed to see how skilfully the Indian guided the 
boat in and out among the rocks, never doubtful 
of his course, never touching the edges of the 
reefs and boulders, never imperiling human life. 

86 



A VACATION TOUR 



I understood that for years these pilots had guided 
the boats down the rapids without a single acci- 
dent. 

On the boat on which I went down the St. Law- 
rence I met Captain Stoddard, of the Crescent 
City Steam Packet, New York and Havana, and 
Mr. Dinsmore, of the Adams Express Company, 
with the ladies of their families. We all saw Mont- 
real together, and some members of the party 
made excursions to places elsewhere. One of these 
was to the famous Grey Nunnery, the doors of 
which were closed to the outside world. But these 
Americans, with true American spirit, expected 
all doors to open to them, and would not accept 
the situation. 

When they told me of their failure to get into 
the nunnery, I said I was astonished that the rep- 
resentative of a big steamboat company and of a 
big express company could not get into any build- 
ing they wished to enter. " I will show you what 
I can do," I said. I had already taken thought of 
the talismanic letter from Daniel Webster, coun- 
tersigned by the President and Mr. Clay, the three 
biggest men, in popular estimation, in the United 
States at that time. As I shall afterward relate, 
this letter did me a good turn later in Scotland, 
opening doors to me that were closed to nearly all 
the world. It was now to serve me well ; but this 
was the first time I had found occasion for its 
service since leaving Washington. 

87 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I went immediately to the numiery, where I 
asked to see the Lady Superior. I told her I had 
visited the Convent of the Sacred Heart at New 
York and Georgetown, and that I wanted to see 
how they compared with this most famous con- 
vent in Canada. This did not impress her very 
much, it seemed to me, and I instantly had recourse 
to my letter. " As you do not know me," I said, 
" this letter may serve as a sort of introduction." 
Then I brought out with a flourish my Webster- 
Taylor-Clay letter. The doors at once flew open 
before me ! After viewing the interior of the nun- 
nery, I told the Lady Superior that I had a party 
of friends at the hotel who would like very much 
to see the building, and that if she would permit 
me, I should like to bring them around in the 
morning. She consented, and the next day I took 
the entire party to the nunnery and we were shown 
through by the Lady Superior. 

My time was now running short, and I had to 
hasten back to New York, if I wanted to catch the 
Parliament. I went by way of Lake Champlain, 
Ticonderoga, and Lake George, and again saw 
something of Saratoga and the Hudson. At Ticon- 
deroga I had the good fortune to meet Bishop 
Spencer of Jamaica, and his son-in-law Arch- 
deacon Smith, and we traveled together to Sara- 
toga. Here we met Commodore Trescot, of the 
Bermuda Yacht Club. I invited them all to dine 
with me at the George Hotel, at Lake Sara- 

88 



A VACATION TOUR 



toga. I was struck by the bishop's dress, for it 
was the first time I had seen the black knicker- 
bockers and the three-cornered chapeau. I do not 
mention the dinner — which was not a great affair 
— merely for the sake of referring to the knicker- 
bockers or the chapeau, but because the bishop 
pressed upon me a special invitation to call upon 
him when I came to London. 



89 



CHAPTER VIII 

A PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

1850-1852 

From Saratoga, I went down tlie Hudson 
to New York, and thence to Boston, where I ar- 
rived in time to take the Parliament, Captain 
Brown, on the 25th of July. I had lived fast in 
the eight weeks of my holiday. It was the only 
vacation I had had since I had begun my business 
life as a grocer boy in Holmes^s store, and I had 
worked hard during that long period. The result 
was that I sprang back too far, like the released 
bow, and was soon to see the effects. As my time 
was so limited, I had tried to make the most of it, 
and had rushed from place to place, had lived in 
all sorts of hotels and eaten all sorts of food. 
Besides, the travel, all of which had been in a 
whirl of excitement, aided in upsetting my phys- 
ical system. 

A few days on the boat were enough to com- 
plete the wreck. I was as badly shaken up as Mont 
Pelee, and was ill for most of the voyage. "When 
I reached Liverpool, I had lost thirty pounds, and 

90 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

had to be taken off the steamer, and was carried 
to the house of Mr. Thayer, the Liverpool partner 
of Colonel Train. It was two or three months be- 
fore I completely recovered. 

I had hardly reached England before I began 
to realize that the people there use a somewhat 
different version of the English language than we 
are accustomed to in America. My physician was 
Dr. Archer. He came to see me one morning just 
after I had had my breakfast, and took his stand 
immediately before the fire, with his back to it. 
" I am half starved," he said. I immediately rang 
the bell, and when the servant came turned to 
the physician and asked what he would have 
for breakfast. He said he had eaten breakfast 
and did not want anything more. " But," said 
I, " you said you were half starved ; surely 
you must be hungry." He burst into a roar of 
laughter. " I meant that I was half starved with 
cold." 

With this as a beginning, I began to pick up 
the vocabulary peculiar to the modern English. 
My next acquisition was " nasty." I was informed 
that a rather disagreeable day was a very " nasty " 
day, and that the weather was simply " beastly." 
After mastering these three words, which were en- 
tirely new to me, and adding such words as I could 
pick up from the daily speech of the men I met, I 
was soon able to get along in some fashion with the 
English of England. 

s 91 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

My first British holiday was spent in Scot- 
land, where I stayed for a week. When I was at 
Balmoral the Queen happened to be there. Leav- 
ing Balmoral, I went to Braemar, on the way to 
Aberdeen. A number of young students were 
there at the time, and I spent some moments talk- 
ing with them. Suddenly, there was a tremendous 
uproar and excitement, and I saw a four-in-hand 
drive up. The students informed me that it was 
the Premier, Lord John Eussell, who had just re- 
turned from an audience with the Queen at Bal- 
moral. I saw there was a chance for some sport. 
Turning to the students, with a smile, I said: "I 
wonder how his lordship knew I had come to 
Braemar I I hope to have the pleasure of speak- 
ing with him." 

The students laughed satirically. One of them 
said: "Look heah, Mr. Train, that sort of thing 
won't do heah, you know. We don't do things as 
you do in America." Another suggested that I 
should not be treated very civilly if I attempted to 
approach Lord John Kussell. 

For reply, I took out a card and wrote on it: 
"An American, in the Highlands of Scotland, is 
delighted to know that he is under the same roof 
with England's Premier, Lord John Kussell, and, 
before he goes, would ask the pleasure of speaking 
with his lordship for a moment." I carefully fold- 
ed the card in the letter that had been given to 
me by Mr. Webster, and afterward signed by the 

92 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

President of the United States and Henry Clay. I 
sent the two in to his lordship. 

In a few minutes the door opened, and the sec- 
retary of Lord John Russell came in and asked 
for " Mr. Train." I said I was Mr. Train. " Lord 
John Russell," replied the secretary, " waits the 
pleasure of speaking with Mr. Train of Boston." 
I followed him out of the room, to the amazement 
of the young students, who didn't do things that 
way in England. 

His lordship received me with that easy grace 
and courtesy which I have always observed in Eng- 
lishmen of high rank. I told him I would not take 
up any of his time, and that I merely wanted to 
meet him. He made me talk about the United 
States, and insisted upon introducing me to his 
wife. She, also, received me graciously, saying 
she was "always glad to see Americans." She 
asked me many questions about this country and 
especially about Niagara Falls. A half hour 
passed by before I was aware of the time. I 
begged pardon for staying so long, and left. 

In my book, Young America Abroad, I have 
referred to this incident and to the courteous re- 
ception I met at Braemar. When I had gone 
around the world, and returned to America, and 
was at Newport with Colonel Hiram Fuller, in '56, 
there came to me in the mail one morning a coro- 
neted note. It was from London, and written by 
Lady Russell. 

93 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" It was so kind of yon," it said, " to remember 
us at Braemar, and to send ns your Young Amer- 
ica Abroad, which his lordship and I have read 
with a great deal of pleasure. When you come 
to London, come to see us. — Fannie Eussell." 

Our Liverpool office was at No. 5 Water Street, 
George Holt's building. As soon as I was able to 
look after the company's interests, I went down to 
the office and took charge. Mr. Thayer returned 
to Boston, and later to New York. This left me 
in complete control. At twenty years of age, I 
was the manager of the great house of Train & 
Co., in Liverpool. 

I at once began to reorganize things in Liver- 
pool, and to develop our business. I put on two 
ships a month between Liverpool and Boston, and 
arranged the James McHenry line to Philadel- 
phia, and sent transient ships to New York. We 
also had what was known as the " triangular line," 
handling cotton and naval stores. 

Liverpool I found to be a great port, but very 
much belated. It was too conservative, and the old 
fogies there were quite content to keep up customs 
that their ancestors had followed without try- 
ing to improve upon them, or to introduce new 
and better ones. I set to work to improve every- 
thing in our business that was susceptible of im- 
provement. 

I was astonished, the very first day after I 
reached the office, to learn that nothing was done 

94 



PAKTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

at night. The entire twelve hours from six in the 
afternoon to six the following morning were ab- 
solutely lost, and this in a business that requires 
every minute of time in the twenty-four hours. 
Ships can not be delayed, held at ports for day- 
light, or laid up while men sleep. The work of 
loading and unloading must proceed with all de- 
spatch, if there is to be any profit in handling the 
business, and ships must be sent on their voyages 
without loss of valuable time. I had supposed 
that the English shippers thoroughly understood 
these simple principles of the business in which 
they have led the world. 

Our vessels were very expensive, and we could 
not afford to lose the twelve hours of the night. 
That much time meant a profit to us, and I deter- 
mined to utilize it. What was my surprise, when 
I went to the proper authorities, to find that we 
should not be allowed to light up the Liverpool 
docks at night, or to have fires on them. It was 
feared that we should burn the structures and 
destroy the shipping and docks. These dignified 
gentlemen even laughed at me for suggesting such 
a foolhardy undertaking. 

I said to myself, there is always one way to 
reach men, and I will find the way to reach these 
dignitaries. It occurred to me that I could reach 
them most surely through a plea for the prosperity 
of the port. I went at once to the representatives 
of all the American lines having ofiices in Liverpool, 

95 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

to organize them into a combined attack on the 
Liverpool port authorities. I saw Captain Delano 
of the Albert Gallatin, Captain French of the 
Henry Clay, Captain West of the Cope Philadel- 
phia line, Captain Cropper of Charles H. Mar- 
shall's Black Ball line, Zerega of the Blue Packet 
line, and others, and we decided upon asking the 
dock board to give us a hearing. This the board 
very readily consented to do. 

Prior to this meeting, I went to all the Amer- 
ican representatives and outlined my plan of cam- 
paign. This was to say very plainly to the dock 
board that unless we could have fires and lights 
on the docks we would take the shipping to other 
ports. The captains and others were astonished, 
but they agreed to let me approach the board with 
this plain threat. 

I then went to the board, with all the repre- 
sentatives of the American lines, and quietly told 
the members that we wanted fires and lights on 
the docks at night, that we needed this in order to 
carry on our business in our way, and that unless 
we could have them, we should at once go to other 
ports. Abandoning a mood of amused laughter, 
these gentlemen suddenly became very serious. 
Their hoary customs did not seem so sacred then, 
and they ended by throwing a complete somer- 
sault, and granting us full permission to light up 
the Liverpool docks at night. 

Of course this made a tremendous difference 
96 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

to all of us. We could now load our ships at night, 
thus saving one half of the twenty-four hours, 
which we had been losing. I understand that the 
Morgan combination, fifty-two years after this, 
has again forced concessions from the Liverpool 
dock board by threatening to take the ships to 
Southampton. 

Our principal freight from Liverpool at that 
time consisted of crockery from the Staffordshire 
potteries, Manchester dry-goods, and iron and 
steel, and what were known as " chow-chow," or 
miscellaneous articles. We often had as many as 
150 consignees in a single cargo. Our principal 
business connections were the firms of John H. 
Green & Co. and Forward & Co., who shipped pot- 
tery; Bailey Brothers & Co., Jevons & Co., A. & 
S. Henry & Co., Crafts & Stell, Charles Humbers- 
ton, and John Ireland. Our passenger agent was 
Daniel P. Mitchell, 18 Waterloo Road. 

The first blunder that I made in Liverpool — 
and the only serious one, I believe — was in con- 
nection with shipping emigrants to the United 
States. One day a man came into the oflSce and 
said he was from the estate of the Marquis of 
Lansdowne, and wanted to contract for the ship- 
ment of 300 passengers for New York. We soon 
came to terms, and I chartered the ship President. 
We charged the Marquis from £3 15s. to £4 a head. 
I learned afterward that these passengers were 
poor tenants of his estates. The Marquis of that 

97 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

time was the grandfather of the present Marquis 
of Lansdowne, Minister of War in the Salisbury- 
cabinet. 

At that time we had to pay $2 a head for all 
immigrants entering the country. I had tried to 
get this changed, through Mr. Webster, but had 
failed. We had also to give bond that the immi- 
grants would not become a public charge. It 
proved a very expensive contract for us, as we 
had to bring back many of these paupers for the 
old Marquis to take care of. 

When I left Boston, I had taken a partnership, 
one sixth interest, in the house of Train & Co. In 
Liverpool I had twenty-five clerks under me, and 
at one time had four ships in Victoria Docks. It 
may be inferred that I conducted the business with 
some degree of success, as my interest — one sixth 
■^-for the first year was $10,000. Next year, when 
in London, I was invited to a grand reception 
given by Abbott Lawrence, 138 Piccadilly, who 
was then United States minister at the court of 
St. Jameses. That day I dined with Lord 
Bis'hop Spencer of Jamaica, whom I had met in 
Saratoga, and took Lady Harvey in. This was my 
acceptance of the invitation he had extended to 
me in Saratoga. The bishop asked if I was going 
to the reception of the American minister that 
night, and, on my saying that I was, asked me to 
accept a place in his carriage. This I very gladly 
did, as I had, by this time learned a great deal 

98 



PAETNER IN THE LIVEKPOOL HOUSE 

about the value of state and ceremony in English 
life. The sequence will show how this worldly 
wisdom served me. 

At the dinner, however, I had had a very nar- 
row escape. It was the " closest call," as we say in 
the West, that my temperance Methodist princi- 
ples ever had. I was asked, as a great mark of 
distinction, to taste the pet wine of the bishop. 
The bishop himself acted as chief tempter of my 
old New England principles. He handed me a 
glass, saying : " Mr. Train, this is the wine we call 
the ' cockroach flavor.' I want you to drink some 
of it with us," and he glanced around his table, at 
which were seated many titled Englishmen and 
women. 

What was I to do ? Should I, caught in so dire 
an emergency, drown my principles in the cup that 
cheers and inebriates? Was all my Methodism 
and New England temperance to go down in ship- 
wreck! The exigency nerved me for the task, and 
I found a courage sufficient to carry me through. 
I had never tasted a drop of wine, and I was not 
going to begin now. I glanced about the room, 
and slowly raised the glass to my lips. I did not 
taste the wine, but the other guests thought that I 
did. " We all know," I said, " that the wine at 
your lordship's table is the best." This passed 
without challenge, and, in the ripple of applause, 
my omission to drink the wine was not observed. 

Later in the evening I went with the bishop 

L.=rc. 9!) 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

to the American minister's reception, and soon 
saw how well it was that I was in his lordship's 
carriage. Had I been in a hired cab, I should have 
fared badly. I should have had to wait in the long 
line of these vehicles, while flunkeys called out, in 
stentorian tones as if to advertise all London of 
the fact that you were in a hired concern, " Mr. 
Train's cab ! " and other flunkeys, down the line, 
would take up the cry, " Mr. Train's cab ! " until 
one would sink in a fever of chagrin. But as I 
came in the bishop's carriage, I heard respectful 
voices announce, " Lord Spencer and Mr. Train." 

I observed several ladies bending over an el- 
derly gentleman, and soon another lady asked me 
if I had seen the duke. As there were two or three 
dukes present, I asked which one. She looked very 
much surprised, as if there could be more than one 
duke in the world. " Why, the Duke of Welling- 
ton ! " she exclaimed. 

I now took occasion to get a good look at the 
venerable old man. It was the first time, and 
proved to be the only time, I ever saw him. He 
would not have impressed me, I think, had it not 
been for the light of history which seemed, after 
I once knew it was he, to illuminate his face and 
frame. It was the last year of his enjoyment of 
great renown. He died shortly afterward. 

While in England, I availed myself of every 
opportunity to see the country, and study it from 
every possible point of view. I may add that this 

100 



PAKTNEH IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

has been my invariable custom in all countries. 
I have gone through the world as an inquirer and 
an observ^er of men and things. As I had visited 
Scotland, I was desirous of seeing another of the 
islands, Wales, so I ran down into that curious 
country on a vacation, in 1850. I went to Bangor, 
on the Menai Straits, and hardly had got into the 
hotel when a tremendous commotion in the corri- 
dors told me that some guest of unusual impor- 
tance had arrived. I asked who it was, and was 
informed that it was the Duke of Devonshire. 

" That is exceedingly fortunate for me," I said. 
" There is no man that I would rather see at this 
moment than the Duke of Devonshire." At this, 
my companions — among whom were young Grin- 
nell, of Grinnell, Bowman & Co., whose father sent 
the Resolute to find Sir John Franklin, young 
Russell, and young Jevons, an iron merchant — be- 
gan laughing immoderately. I wrote on a card 
that an American, who happened to be at the 
George Hotel when he arrived, would like to see 
him, if it would not be too great an intrusion upon 
his time. I added that it had been one of the de- 
sires of my life to visit his famous estate at Chats- 
worth. 

This note I sent to the duke by a messenger. 
Immediately came back a reply that the duke 
would be very glad to see me, and I was ushered 
into his presence. He was then an elderly man, 
his voice tremulous and uncertain. To make it 

101 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

still more difficult to converse with him, he was 
deaf, but used an ear-trumpet. I succeeded in tell- 
ing him that his palace at Chatsworth was well 
known throughout America by reputation, and 
that I should like very much to see it, while I was 
in that part of Great Britain. He replied that I 
must certainly see it before leaving. He then 
called to his secretary to bring him a blue card, 
and wrote upon it a pass to enter the grounds and 
buildings. This was all very kind, and I thanked 
him for the courtesy. 

He then completely stunned me by saying: 
" You must see the emperor ! " I knew that the 
Czar of Russia had been his guest, but it was not 
likely that he was at Chatsworth at that time; so 
I endeavored to divine what the duke meant. My 
mind ran over horses, conservatories, and dogs. 

I could not, for a moment or two, imagine what 
" the emperor " could be, and was about to com- 
mit myself irrevocably to a conservatory, a favor- 
ite horse, or hound ; but before making any remark 
gave him an appreciative smile which seemed to 
please his grace. He called for the blue card 
again, and wrote on it : " Let the emperor play for 
Mr. Train." I learned afterward that it cost the 
duke $500 to have "the emperor" play, and so 
much the more appreciated his courtesy. I re- 
marked that I had heard " the emperor " referred 
to as the highest fountain in all Europe. 

As soon as I got back to Liverpool, I made up 
102 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

a little party to visit Cbatsworth. When we 
reached the station I was astonished to see almost 
a regiment of uniformed servants waiting to meet 
ns. I was even more astounded when the head of 
this body-guard of retainers approached and asked, 
in the most deferential manner : " When will your 
royal highness have luncheon? " I saw, of course, 
that they were taking me for some one else, and 
remarked that they were perhaps waiting for the 
arrival of the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, whom I had 
just seen at the hotel. The prince came up almost 
immediately afterward, and had the pleasure of 
seeing " the emperor " play, by special authority, 
on my card from the duke. 

The palace is a magnificent residence, so far 
exceeding anything of the kind in England at that 
time, that George IV. is said to have felt offended 
when invited there, because his own residence was 
shabby in comparison. I made the acquaintance at 
Chatsworth of Sir Joseph Paxton, who the follow- 
ing year modeled the entire glass system of the 
first Crystal Palace at London. I was to see some- 
thing of the Crystal Palace the next year. 

Six years after this, when I published my book, 
Young America Abroad, I sent a marked copy to 
the Duke of Devonshire, and he wrote me a letter 
in which he said : " I am an old man now, sixty- 
two, but I have not forgotten the delightful day 
when I met you on the Menai Straits." 

One day, in my office in Liverpool, I received 
103 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

a card from the Secretary, inviting me to the 
exhibition in London, and Mr. Riddle of Boston, 
who was then on his way to London, asked me to 
be present on the day when the Queen was to come, 
which was the day before the opening. I went to 
London, and that was the first and the only time I 
ever saw Queen Victoria. She was with Prince 
Albert, and they were accompanied, I remember, 
by a brilliant staff. 

I recall an incident during my visit to Lon- 
don on this occasion which aptly illustrates the 
want of suggestiveness on the part of Englishmen. 
They are content to go along in old ruts, provided 
only they be old enough. Frank Fuller was the 
contractor for the Crystal Palace, and a problem 
arose, in the construction, as to what to do with a 
certain beautiful and aged elm that had been an 
object of reverence and stood in the way of the 
proposed building. It had finally been decided to 
cut it down, in order to get it out of the way. 

" What ! " said I, " cut it down — this exquisite 
tree ? " Some one remarked that the authorities 
did not wish to cut it down, but it stood directly in 
the way of the great palace, and would have to be 
sacrificed. " The palace is here for time," I said, 
" and this tree may be here for eternity. Spare 
the tree." "But how?" they asked* They were 
bewildered — did not have a thought of what to do, 
except to hew down the venerable tree. "Build 
your palace around it," I said. This simple 

104 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

device had not occurred to them, but it saved the 
elm. 

Mr. Fuller was so pleased by the suggestion, 
that he began asking me about hotels in America, 
and proposed that I undertake the building of an 
American hotel in London. I said that some time 
I should, perhaps, try the experiment, but that for 
the present my shipping business would keep me 
fully occupied. 

I might as well mention here, although it is not 
in its chronological order, my later experience in 
trying to establish an American hotel in London. 
It was seven years after the exhibition when the 
question of an American hotel came up again. I 
had worked up the plan very thoroughly, and had 
some of the most prominent and influential men 
in England as directors of the proposed company. 
We had, also, obtained options on several acres of 
desirable land in the Strand as a site. In the 
board of directors was Lord Bury, private secre- 
tary of the Queen, son of the Earl of Albemarle; 
Mark Lemon, of Punch; and others. The only 
obstacle to our success was the passage of a bill 
through Parliament authorizing us to occupy the 
land. The hotel caused a great sensation in Lon- 
don, and there was much talk of it as a daring and 
not altogether agreeable invasion of England by 
Americans. On the other hand, there was much 
commendation, and George Augustus Sala, the 
leading editorial writer of the Telegraph, wrote a 

105 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

letter in which he mentioned my name as a guar^ 
anty that the hotel would be built and would suc- 
ceed, as, he said, I had succeeded in everything. 

Matters were well advanced, and it looked 
as if we should have the hotel. I wanted it con- 
structed along distinctly American lines, and sent 
to Paran Stevens to get from him the plans of his 
three hotels, the Kevere House in Boston, the Fifth 
Avenue Hotel in New York, and the Continental 
in Philadelphia. We had everything in readiness, 
when the news came that the bill had failed in the 
House of Lords by sixteen votes, although the 
House of Commons had passed it. I came as near 
as that to building the first American hotel in Lon- 
don. Fifty years later, the Hotel Cecil was built, 
a half century after I had suggested the idea and 
perfected the plan. 

My experience in Saratoga had revealed to me 
the want of suggestiveness and resource in men in 
general. They will continue doing the same thing 
in the same old way generation after generation, 
without taking thought for improving methods in 
the interest of economy, of time, and of money. I 
have, from time to time, suggested a large number 
of little improvements, mechanical or other de- 
vices, for which I have never taken out patents or 
received a cent of profit in any way. I shall bring 
together here a few of these suggestions, made at 
different times and in different countries. 

I used to go to the old cider-mill at Piper's, 
106 



PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE 

about a half mile from our farm. We went in an 
ox-cart, filled with apples. "When we got to the 
cider-mill, all we had to do was to pull out a peg, 
and the apples would roll out into the hopper of 
the mill. 

W^hen I came to New York years afterward I 
was astonished to notice that there were a half- 
dozen men around every coal-cart, unloading the 
coal. I thought of the ox-cart, the peg, and the 
hopper, which I had used thirty years before. I 
suggested the use of a device for letting the coal 
run from the cart into the cellar, but could not get 
any one to listen to the proposition. Now, years 
after my suggestion, all of these carts in New 
York and other large cities of America have small 
scoops running from the cart to the coal-hole, and 
a single man unloads the cart by winding a wind- 
lass and lifting the front end of the wagon. In 
London they still keep up the old, clumsy, and ex- 
pensive method of unloading with sacks. The 
English are in some things where we were a cen- 
tury ago. 

Once in London I was astonished to see a man, 
after writing something with a lead-pencil, search 
through his pockets for a piece of india-rubber 
with which to erase an error. He had lost it, and 
could only smudge the paper by marking out what 
he had written. I said to him : " Why don't you 
attach the rubber to the pencil? Then you couldn't 
lose it." He jumped at my suggestion, took out a 
® 107 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

patent for the rubber attachment to pencils, and 
made money. 

When Bowland Hill, the great English postal 
reformer, introduced penny-postage into England, 
he found it necessary to employ many girls to clip 
off the stamps from great sheets. I took a sheet 
of paper to him, and showed him how easy it 
would be by perforation to tear off the stamps as 
needed. He adopted my idea; and now a single 
machine does the whole work. 

I noticed one day in England a lot of "flun- 
keys " rushing up to the carriages of titled ladies 
and busying themselves adjusting steps, which 
were separate from the carriage, and had been 
taken along with great inconvenience. I said to 
myself, why not have the steps attached? and I 
spoke about the idea to others. It was taken up, 
and carried out. Now every carriage has steps 
attached as a part of the structure. 

In '50, I was with James McHenry in Liver- 
pool, and in trying to pour some ink from a bottle 
into the ink-well, the bottle was upset, and the ink 
spilled all over the desk. This was because too 
much ink came from the mouth. " Give the bottle 
a nose, like a milk pitcher," I said ; " then you can 
pour the ink into the well easily." Holden, of 
Liverpool, took up the idea, and patented it, and 
made a fortune out of it. 



108 



CHAPTER IX 

MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE — RETURN TO 
LIVERPOOL 

1850-1852 

After the first short stay in Saratoga during 
my vacation trip in America, I had started for a 
journey West; and was soon to meet with an ex- 
perience that turned the current of my life. At 
Syracuse I saw a half dozen students talking to a 
lovely girl, bidding her good-by. Her appearance 
struck me in a peculiar way. I turned to Alfredo 
Ward, who, with his wife, was traveling with me, 
they having just come from Valparaiso, Chili. 
** Look at that girl with the curls," said I. " Do 
you know her? " he asked. " I never saw her be- 
fore," I answered, " but she shall be my wife." 

I was quite ready to abandon the remainder of 
my Western trip, to get an opportunity to meet 
this girl. Taking my grip up hurriedly, I rushed 
over to the train she was on, supposing she was 
going to New York. I soon discovered that she 
was going the other way, and ran through in my 
mind the chances I could take, the risks I could 

109 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

run, and so took an opportunity by the throat. I 
knew that I was not compelled to leave Boston un- 
til July 25, and so I had ample time to get to my 
ship. 

I entered the car where the girl was, and found 
a vacant seat opposite her. An elderly gentleman 
was with her, whom I took to be her father. I 
selected the seat opposite with the deliberate pur- 
pose of making the acquaintance of the pair at the 
first opportunity that occurred or that I could 
create. 

My chance came sooner than I expected. The 
elderly gentleman tried to raise the sash of the 
window, and could not move it; it had, as usual, 
stuck fast. I sprang lightly and very quickly 
across the aisle and said, " Permit me to assist 
you," and adding my youthful strength to his, 
raised the window. Both he and the young lady 
thanked me. The old gentleman went further and 
asked me to take the seat directly opposite him 
and the young lady, on the same side of the car. 
I did so, and we entered into conversation imme- 
diately. I continued my speculations as to the 
relationship that existed between them. The gen- 
tleman seemed rather elderly for her husband, and 
she too young to be married at all. He did not look 
exactly as if he were her father. 

Before I could determine this question for my- 
self, he came to my assistance, and told me the 
young lady was the daughter of Colonel George 

110 




Mrs. George Francis Train, 
From a ])liotoL'rai)1i. 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 



T. M. Davis, who was captain and aide-de-camp, 
under General Scott, in the Mexican War, and 
afterward chief clerk in the War Department at 
Washington. He introduced himself as Dr. Wal- 
lace, and said that he was taking Miss Davis to 
her home in the West. I also learned that they 
were going to Oswego, where they would take a 
boat. I immediately exclaimed that I, also, was 
going in that direction, and was delighted to know 
we should be fellow passengers. In such mat- 
ters — for love is like war — quickness of deci- 
sion is everything. I would have gone in any 
direction, if only I could remain her fellow pas- 
senger. 

And so we arrived at Niagara Falls together. 
Dr. Wallace was kind enough to permit me to es- 
cort his charge about the Falls, and I was foolish 
enough to do several risky things, in a sort of half- 
conscious desire to appear brave — the last infir- 
mity of the mind of a lover. I went under the Falls 
and clambered about in all sorts of dangerous 
places, in an intoxication of love. It was the same 
old story, only with the difference that our love 
was mutually discovered and confessed amid the 
roaring accompaniment of the great cataract. We 
were at the Falls forty-eight hours, and before we 
left we were betrothed. 

Soon afterward I sailed for London, as already 
set forth. It was not till '51 that I came back to 
America, principally for the purpose of marry- 
Ill 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 



ing Miss Davis and taking her back to England 
with me. 

I arrived in Boston sliortly before the celebra- 
tion of Bunker Hill Bay, which was always a great 
occasion in that city. General John S. Tyler was 
grand-marshal of the day, and he appointed me 
one of his aides. It was a time when young people 
were usually left out of all public business ar- 
rangements. Only the middle-aged or old took 
part in anything of the spectacular nature in this 
great parade. Probably I attracted a great deal 
of attention, therefore, because of my youth, being 
then only twenty-one. 

In truth, I felt a little flattered by the appoint- 
ment, and determined to make as good a show as 
possible. Having been born and reared on a farm, 
I knew how to ride, so I got the stableman to give 
me the finest stepper he could furnish. He found 
a beautiful animal, with a frolicsome spirit, and 
I felt that I should prove at least a good part of 
the exhibition. I was decked in a flowing red, 
white, and blue sash that swept below the saddle- 
girths, and my horse was a proud-looking and 
dainty-paced beast. With a little rehearsing of my 
part, I was fully prepared. 

On the occasion of the parade, I am quite sure, 
I was the observed of many observers. The spec- 
tators were let into the mystery of the beautiful 
caracoling and dancing of my horse, whom I 
touched occasionally with the spur in a particular 

112 



MY COURTSPIIP AND MARRIAGE 

way, and who acquitted himself with great credit. 
The populace thought he was trying to unseat me, 
or to run away, and that it was only by excellent 
horsemanship that I was able to hold my seat and 
look like a centaur. I am ashamed to say, at this 
far distance in retrospect, that it was a proud mo- 
ment for me, and that I took so much pleasure in 
so idle and empty a show. But youth must be 
served. 

I had charge of the Colonial Governors, who 
were the guests of the city, and of the President, 
and I escorted them from Boston to Charlestown. 
There were Sir John A. MacDonald, of Canada; 
Governor Tilly, of New Brunswick; the Honor- 
able Joseph Howe, ex-Governor of Nova Scotia; 
and Millard Fillmore, President of the United 
States. President Fillmore and Sir John Mac- 
Donald rode on the back seat of the first carriage, 
and Howe and Tilly on the front seat. Somehow, 
Boston seemed to regard the colonial officials as 
equal to, if not a little better than the President. 
I suppose this was because of the sentiment of 
Bunker Hill, and because the presence of British 
representatives was a matter of pride and gratifi- 
cation. 

But the day was to end in gloom. As I was in 
the midst of the gaiety and at the height of my 
exultation, a messenger handed me a despatch. I 
tore it open, and found that it was from a friend in 
Louisville, Ky., and contained a warning. "Miss 

113 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Davis, to whom I was betrothed, lived in Louis- 
ville, and I was soon to marry her there. The 
telegram urged me to hasten my journey, as the 
report of the coming marriage had created a great 
deal of bad feeling. My friend advised me to lay 
aside everything and go to Louisville with all pos- 
sible despatch. 

I could not imagine, at first, what this meant. 
It seemed to convey only some presage of dis- 
aster. I left the gay scenes of the parade and hur- 
ried to my room at the hotel. There I made in- 
stant preparation for a trip to Louisville. 

Before leaving Boston, however, I learned 
what it was that had caused my friend in Louis- 
ville so much concern. Some time before, there 
had been a marriage of a Kentucky girl with a 
Northerner — the much-talked of wedding of Bige- 
low Lawrence and Miss Sallie Ward. It had 
aroused a great deal of bitter feeling, because of 
the increasing tension and friction between the 
North and the South. This was none of my 
affair; nor did I share the feeling on either side. 
Indeed, at that time, I knew little and cared less 
about the sectional differences between the North 
and South. The only interest I had in the South 
at that time was a commercial one in our shipping 
business, and the more personal interest attaching 
to that portion of the South that held my future 
wife. 

My own approaching marriage to Miss Davis 
114 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 

had, it seems, been regarded as of sufficient im- 
portance to arouse the same feeling that had been 
created by the Lawrence- Ward marriage. My 
friends were manifesting much solicitude. What 
most alarmed them was the fact that a number of 
gallant Kentuckians were trying to marry Miss 
Davis themselves, and thus patriotically save her 
for the South. Among these patriots were Sen- 
ator James Shields, Mexican hero of Belleville, 
111., Lieutenant Merriman of the navy, and an 
officer of the army. There was, also, a suitor 
from my side of the line — " Ned " Baker, of 
Springfield, 111., who was afterward United States 
consul-general at Montevideo. In her letters 
to me she had mentioned all of these gentle- 
men, but I was not particularly anxious about the 
matter, feeling that there was safety in numbers. 
But now that my friends were interesting them- 
selves, I thought it full time that I should be look- 
ing after affairs myself. 

I was doomed to suffer from the inconsistency 
of woman. When I reached Louisville I wrote to 
her, mentioning the reports sent me by friends. 
This angered her. She became indignant because 
I had taken any notice of these rumors, and re- 
fused to see me on that day. But on the following 
day she was in a milder mood, ready to see me. 
This meeting put to rest forever all doubts, suspi- 
cions, and jealousies, and my fears melted into 
thin air. 

115 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

But for all this, I was determined to take no 
further chances with three or four rivals, and de- 
cided that I should not again leave my affianced 
bride behind me. I insisted upon an immediate 
ceremony, and we were married by the rector of 
the Episcopal church in Louisville, October 5, 
'51. Her father. Colonel George T. M. Davis, 
was then editor of Haldeman's Louisville Courier. 
Belle Key, the famous Kentucky beauty, whose 
sister, Annie Key, married Matthew Ward, who 
killed a Kentuckian in a duel, was my wife's 
bridesmaid, and Sylvanus J. Macey, son of Wil- 
liam H. Macey, was groomsman. My wife was 
only seventeen years old. She was very beautiful. 
Her picture appeared in the Book of Beauty the 
following year. 

We came east from Louisville on our wedding 
journey, stopping at Cincinnati, where I had a 
curious experience. The Burnett House was the 
most popular hotel in the city at that time, and 
we stayed there. It had just fitted up the first 
"bridal chamber" in this country, if not in the 
world. Every little hotel has one now; but then 
such a thing was unheard of, so far as I have been 
able to ascertain. At any rate, Mr. Drake, the 
clerk, asked me if I did not wish to take the " bri- 
dal chamber." He told me it was the only one in 
the world. As I was ever keen and ready for a 
novelty, I replied that of course I would. 

I had already been in a great many hotels in 
116 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 

this country. The prevailing rate of charge was 
about $2 a day, at that time. I supposed that this 
splendid room would cost a little more, being a 
special apartment — perhaps about $5 a day. It 
cost $15 ! But I was willing to pay for the honor 
of occupying the first " bridal chamber " in the 
world. 

From Cincinnati, we came directly on to Bos- 
ton, and stayed at the Winthrop House, where I 
had been before. I soon had a conference with 
the Boston house which I represented, and it was 
determined that I should return to Liverpool and 
resume charge of the branch there, but in some- 
what different and better circumstances. I re- 
turned in '52. The ship we sailed on was the 
Daniel Webster, built by Donald Mackay in East 
Boston, and which I had named in special honor 
of my friend, the great Daniel. Captain Howard 
was in command. 

The trip was destined to be eventful. Five 
days after leaving Boston we ran into a heavy 
gale from the west. Our boat was very sturdy, 
and we had no fears, but I knew that many smaller 
and less seaworthy ships would suffer in such a 
driving storm. We were, therefore, on the look- 
out for vessels in distress. 

For the greater part of the time, during the 
height of the gale, I stood on the bridge close- 
ly scanning the horizon line in front. Suddenly 
something seemed to rise and assume form out 

117 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

of the storm-wrack, and this gradually grew into 
the shape of a vessel. I saw that it was a wreck, 
shouted to the captain, but he, looking in the di- 
rection, could make out nothing. My eyes seemed 
to be better than his, although his had been trained 
by long practise at sea. He could not see much 
better when he got his glasses turned in the direc- 
tion I indicated, but finally he discovered the ves- 
sel, though he did not seem desirous of leaving his 
present course to offer assistance. 

I insisted that we should go to the rescue of 
the ship and her crew, and he turned and said: 
" Mr. Train, we sea captains are prevented from 
going to the rescue of vessels, or from leaving our 
course, by the insurance companies. We should 
forfeit our policy in the event of being lost or 
damaged." 

"Let me decide that," said L "We can not 
do otherwise than go to the assistance of these 
persons." And we went. The Webster bore 
swiftly down upon the wreck, which proved to be 
in worse plight than I had imagined. She was 
buifeted about by the waves, and seemed in peril 
of going down at any moment. Men and women 
were clinging to her rigging, hanging over her 
sides, and trying to get spars and timbers on which 
to entrust themselves to the sea. The doomed 
vessel was the Unicorn, from an Irish port, bound 
for St. John's, N. B., with passengers and railway 
iron. This iron had been the cause of the wreck, 

118 



MY COURTSHIP AND MAERIAGE 

for in the rough weather it had broken away from 
its fastenings, or " shipped/' as the sailors express 
it, and had broken holes in the sides of the boat 
and overweighted it on one side. 

A brig that had sighted the Unicorn before we 
came up had taken off a few of the passengers — 
as many as it could accommodate. The Unicorn 
was a small vessel, and there seemed little chance 
for the rest of the passengers unless we could 
reach them. The sea was running very swift and 
high, and it was not possible to bring the Webster 
close to the side of the Unicorn. To make matters 
worse, the sailors had found that there was whisky 
in the cargo, and in their desperation, drank it 
without restraint. They were, consequently, un- 
manageable. They could not help us to assist the 
miserable passengers on their own boat. 

There was nothing else to be done except to 
get into our small boats and try to save as many 
passengers as possible. The captain got into one 
boat and I into another, and we were rowed to the 
side of the Unicorn. There we discovered that 
many had already perished. Dead bodies were 
floating in the sea about the ship. We tried to get 
up close enough to reach the passengers, but found 
it impossible. 

" Throw the passengers into the sea," I shout- 
ed to the captain of the Unicorn, *^ and we will pick 
them up. We can't get up to you." In this way, 
the crew of the Unicom throwing men and women 

119 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

into the sea, and our boats picking them up, we 
succeeded in saving two hundred. All the rest — ^I 
do not know how many — were drowned. We final- 
ly got these two hundred persons safely on board 
the Daniel Webster. 

Here we discovered other difficulties, and it 
seemed, for a time, as if starvation might do the 
work that had been denied to the waves. There 
was, also, the question of accommodations ; but we 
solved this problem by taking some of our extra 
sails and tarpaulin and rigging up a protection for 
them on the deck and in the hold, so that we made 
them all fairly comfortable. The problem of food 
was far more difficult. We simply had no food, 
the captain said. There was hardly more than 
enough for the crew and passengers of our own 
vessel, as the delay caused by the rescue and the 
departure from our course had made an extra de- 
mand upon supplies. 

Here a happy thought occurred to me. We 
happened to be carrying a cargo of corn-meal. I 
had heard that the Irish, in one of their famines, 
had been fed with corn-meal, learning to eat and 
even to like it. 

" Open the hatches ! " I cried, with the enthu- 
siasm of the philosopher who cried " Eureka." 
The problem of food was soon solved. Two of the 
barrels were cut in half, making four tubs. From 
the staves of other barrels we made spoons, and 
from the meal we made mush which the half- 

120 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 

starved men, women, and children ate with great 
relish. They lived on it until we got them safely- 
landed on English soil, the entire two hundred 
persons reaching port without the loss of a single 
soul. 

This was my first service at a rescue, and, of 
course, I was proud of it. Captain Howard re- 
ceived a handsome medal from the Life Saving 
Society of England, and the incident greatly in- 
creased the reputation of our packets. 

On arriving at Liverpool, we went to No. 153 
Duke Street, a house then kept by Mrs. Blodgett, 
whose husband saw service as consul in Spain. 
This house was at that time the favorite resort of 
American sea captains and shipping men, and was 
a sort of central point for all Americans in Liver- 
pool. John Alfred Marsh, who had been with us 
in Boston, was with me in Liverpool at this time, 
in the branch of our house there; and I think he 
is the only man living among all of my friends of 
that year. He is now connected with the Guion 
Line steamships. 

During the first year in Liverpool after my 
marriage, I had a peculiar and interesting expe- 
rience with the science of phrenology. At that 
time every one was talking about its " revela- 
tions," and I became somewhat interested in it. 
My interest came chiefly, however, through James 
McHenry, whose line of ships to Philadelphia I 
had charge of. He suggested one day that I go 

121 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

to a phrenologist, saying that I had a most curi- 
ous head. Up to this time, I had not taken any 
stock in the science, which I set down as charla- 
tanry and mountebankism. But he insisted, and 
finally I consented to go with him to Bridges, then 
the most famous phrenologist in Liverpool or in 
the west of England. 

Bridges astonished me so greatly by telling me 
things about myself that I had supposed no one 
knew but I, that my interest was awakened. 
Still I thought there must be something queer 
about the thing, and I accused McHenry of having 
told Bridges something about me beforehand so 
that I might be taken by surprise. McHenry so 
vehemently denied this that I knew he was telling 
me the truth. There was nothing to do but to 
accept the "chart" of Bridges as being at least 
sincere. 

As I like to investigate everything for myself, 
I determined to see what there was in phrenology, 
and to have my head examined in circumstances 
where there could be no question that the phre- 
nologist had had any information about me. So 
I went to London, and there consulted a still 
more famous phrenologist, the octogenarian Dono- 
van. I said to him : " Mr. Donovan, I want you 
to tell me the plain truth about my head." " Phre- 
nology does not lie," he said. "Put down your 
guinea." 

I put down the guinea, and submitted to an ex- 
122 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 

amination. He told me almost the same things 
that Bridges had said, and thus confirmed the first 
chart of my head. After finishing his examination, 
Donovan looked at me and said : " You will be 
either a great reformer, or a great pirate. It 
merely depends upon the direction you take in 
Ethics I " 

Even this examination did not entirely satisfy 
me. There were still higher authorities in phre- 
nology, and I felt that I should not be satisfied until 
I had the verdict of the highest court of appeals. 
I consulted every phrenologist I could reach — a 
great professor in Paris, another from Germany, 
and finally, I reached the highest authority then 
living, the highest that has ever lived, possibly, 
the great Dr. Fowler, who was then lecturing in 
England. 

He came to Liverpool to lecture, and I went to 
hear him. Fowler asked for some one from the 
audience to allow him to examine his head. As he 
had never seen me, I felt that I could in this way 
get an absolutely impartial and unprejudiced read- 
ing. I went on the stage, and my appearance 
caused a ripple of surprise, for I was known in 
Liverpool. The phrenologist placed his hands on 
my head and exclaimed : " Jehu, what a head ! " 
The audience applauded, as if they thought I had 
a head, and had used it to good purpose in their 
city. 

Beverley Tucker was American consul in Liv- 
10 123 



y 



^' 



MY LIFE IN MAISTY STATES 

erpool at that time, having been appointed by 
President Pierce. When the famous actor and 
dramatist, John Brougham, visited Liverpool, I 
suggested that we Americans, in whose country 
Brougham had lived and done his best work, 
should entertain him at a dinner at the Waterloo 
House. We had a large and lively company pres- 
ent, and Brougham was in his best vein. I asked 
Brougham for his autograph, and, at the same 
time, something about the poet Willis, who was 
then our favorite American poet. He gave me 
instantly, without apparent thought, the following 
verse : 

** Hyperion curls his forehead on, 
Behold the poet Willis I 
For love of such a Cory don, 
Who would not be a Phyllis ? " 

Thus have I narrated, in this and the previous 
chapters, the most interesting events and expe- 
riences of my life in Liverpool. The life there 
was particularly varied and altogether delightful. 
It was, of course, a very busy time, but I managed 
to get a great deal of pleasure out of it. There 
was a constant round of entertainments, and the 
social life of the city was generally gay and in- 
teresting. At this period I had two portraits of 
my wife and myself made. They are now in the 
possession of my daughter, who keeps them in the 
room which she always has ready for me in the 
country. 

124 



MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 

As for my standing in the city, I may give here 
the opinion of Charles Mackay, the poet, author 
of Cheer, Boys, Cheer, and other well-known 
I3oems, who wrote, in reviewing my book. Young 
America in Wall Street, that I "walked up the 
Liverpool Exchange like a Baring or a Roths- 
child." I remained in Liverpool one year with my 
wife, and then returned to the United States. 
This was in ^52. The best men of Liverpool had 
made me welcome everywhere, in all circles of 
business or of society. 



125 



CHAPTER X 

BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

1853-1855 

My wife and I in returning to Boston cam-e on 
a visit that we expected to be brief. I confidently 
supposed I should go back to Liverpool and con- 
tinue the business of the branch house. But this 
was not to be. Instead, I was soon to make a far 
wider departure in business fields and methods, 
and to try my fortune at another end of the earth. 

When I arrived in Boston, I had a conference 
with Colonel Train about conditions in England, 
and suggested to him that I should have a part- 
nership interest in the Boston house, as well as in 
the house in Liverpool. To my surprise, Colonel 
Train was not only astonished, but indignant. He 
could not understand how I had pushed ahead so 
rapidly, and this swift advance was by no means 
pleasant to him. He felt that, in some way, I was 
pushing him out of his place. 

"Would you ride over me roughshod?" he 
asked, almost fiercely, when I ventured to suggest 
a larger partnership interest. I replied that I 

126 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

thought I had given full value for everything that 
the house had done for me, and that I should be 
able to do so in the future. After some further 
discussion, in which the old gentleman was molli- 
fied, the matter was arranged. I received a part- 
nership interest that was equal to $15,000 a year — 
and I was only twenty-two years old at the time. 

As soon as the contract was signed, and it was 
in my hand, I said — because I was still nettled by 
the manner in which he had received my sugges- 
tion of a partnership — " Colonel, as you do not 
seem to care to take me into the firm, here is your 
contract"; and I tore it in two and handed him 
the pieces. " I am going to Australia." 

This cool announcement astonished him. He 
did not know what to do. Finally, we came to 
terms. It was decided that I should go to Mel- 
bourne to start my own house with Captain Cald- 
well, one of our oldest ship-captains, the house 
to be known as " Caldwell, Train & Co." It was 
Colonel Train's view that this elderly man would 
act as a check upon my youthful rashness, he hav- 
ing no interest in the firm but good-will toward 
me and one of his captains. 

The arrangements once completed, I was eager 
to be about my work in the antipodes, and pre- 
pared to sail at the first opportunity. Everything 
was taken from Boston — clerks, sets of books, 
business forms, etc. Nothing was left to the 
chance of finding or getting in Australia the ma- 

127 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

terial that we might need. And so the new house 
of " Caldwell, Train & Co." sailed away from Bos- 
ton on the Plymouth Eock for Melbourne, Austra- 
lia, on a singularly audacious venture. 

Captain Caldwell went out in charge of the 
clerks, while I was to go by a different route a 
little later. I went to New York and took passage 
from there in the old Whitlock Havre packet, Ba- 
varia, Captain Bailey. I had two clerks with me, 
and carried, also, a large amount of office supplies 
in duplicate. Duncan, Sherman & Co. had ap- 
pointed me their agent for the purchase of gold in 
Melbourne, which was to be shipped to London or 
New York as circumstances permitted, and I had 
also been appointed by the Boston underwriters 
their agent to represent them in the South Seas. 
The outlook for business seemed especially bright. 

I have traveled a great deal since that time, but 
this was the longest period I have ever been on 
a ship in a single voyage. We were ninety-two 
days from New York to Melbourne. I have twice 
since gone entirely around the world in less time. 
It was very dreary at times, and I had to resort 
to all manner of things in order to pass the hours. 
These attempted diversions were often very 
amusing. 

I have always wanted to do things a little dif- 
ferently from others, partly because it has been 
more interesting to do them in a novel manner, but 
chiefly because I have found that a better way than 

128 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTKALIA 

the accepted one could be found. My desire for 
novelty led me to do some curious things during 
this long and tedious voyage to Melbourne. One 
day I was looking at the porpoises playing about 
the ship's bows, and it occurred to me that I could 
harpoon one of them. I asked the captain if he 
had a harpoon, and he brought me one. I then had 
a rope tied fast about me, so that I could be low- 
ered over the bow. I had a good chance and let 
fly the harpoon, and, as luck would have it, suc- 
ceeded in getting a fine porpoise. My successful 
throw astonished every one — myself more than 
any. The porpoise was brought aboard, and we 
found portions of it very good eating. 

On another day I hooked a shark, a " man- 
eater,'' ten feet long, and this, also, was brought 
aboard, but no one proposed to eat it. A little 
later we passed into the zone of the albatrosses, 
and myriads of these exquisite birds flew over or 
hovered above the ship. I was desirous to have 
one of them, and resorted to stratagems learned 
years ago in the days when I used to snare rab- 
bits and net pigeons on the old farm in New Eng- 
land. I baited a hook with pork, and threw it out 
upon the water. Instantly a great albatross 
swooped down upon it and swallowed the bait. I 
drew the bird on board, and found it a magnificent 
specimen, measuring twelve feet from tip to tip 
of its wings. Of course, I released the bird very 
soon. In such pastimes, we beguiled the time, un- 

129 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

til we finally swept through the great South Seas 
and into Hobson\s Bay, passed Point Nepean, and 
anchored off Sandridge. 

I had fancied that Melbourne was not a fre- 
quented port, off the tracks of commerce, although 
springing into life and prominence. Imagine my 
surprise when, on rounding the point where one 
could sweep the expanse of the bay, I saw before 
me some six hundred vessels that had reached the 
port before we arrived, and all, like ourselves, at- 
tracted there by the rumors of gold, gold, gold! 
For a second time within a few years, the whole 
world had gone wild over a gold discovery, and 
was now sending thousands of persons to Austra- 
lia. Thousands more were deterred from going 
only by the fear of starvation, for very few be- 
lieved at that time that Australia could feed the 
hungry searchers after gold, much less give them 
a fortune in gold nuggets. 

Before I left Boston I had heard much about 
the perils of starvation in Australia. I was told 
that the country produced little, and that its scant 
resources would soon be overtaxed by the horde 
of gold-seekers. " Starve ! " I said ; " why there 
are twenty million sheep in the island." I was 
then told that man could not live by mutton alone. 
But I knew that, with these millions of sheep, 
there was little danger of famine. 

From the anchorage at Sandridge to Melbourne 
the distance is about ten miles, the Yarra-Yarra 

130 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

winding and twisting through the tortuous chan- 
nel. As this river is too shallow to admit ships 
of a greater burden than sixty tons, all large ves- 
sels anchor at Sandridge, or Williamstown. While 
the distance up the Yarra-Yarra is ten miles, 
across the spit of sand it is only two. I went into 
Melbourne at once, secured buildings for our 
cargo, and arranged for lighters to take it up the 
Yarra-Yarra. 

The very first thing that impressed me in Aus- 
tralia was the miserable and unnecessary incon- 
venience of having to send everything up the 
twisted channel of the Yarra-Yarra by lighters. I 
determined to look into this and see what could be 
done. The method was too expensive and too slow 
to suit me. I immediately called on the most in- 
fluential men of the city, like De Graves, Octavius 
Brown, Dalgetty, Cruikshank & Co., and James 
Henty, and said to them : " This thing of coming 
by way of the Yarra-Yarra, ten miles, when it is 
only two miles by land, is out of the question. Let 
us build a railway to Sandridge." 

Apparently, this had not occurred to them. 
They had brought from England their habits of 
thought, and accepted things as they found 
them. But I kept at the railway suggestion, until 
the line was built. This was my first experience in 
organizing railways. It was not my last. 

I also found that it was not possible to get suit- 
able accommodations in Melbourne for business. 

131 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

There was no building there that was large 
enough. In order to get one sufficiently commo- 
dious, I had to build it. Accordingly, we put up 
at the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Streets, 
opposite the railway station, the biggest structure 
in the city. It cost a pretty penny. The building 
was 140 feet deep, 40 feet wide and three stories 
high. The date, " 1854," was cut in stone at the 
top. The edifice cost $60,000. I imported iron 
shutters from England to make it fireproof. 

It was also necessary to have a building at 
Sandridge, a warehouse in which to store our 
goods until they were needed in Melbourne, or 
until they were shipped for America or Europe. 
In putting up this building, I resolved to make an 
experiment. This was to have the building made 
in Boston, and shipped out to me to be erected at 
Sandridge, thousands of miles away. If success- 
ful, the warehouse would cost much less and would 
be of better material and in better style than any- 
thing I could get in Australia. It reached Sand- 
ridge all right and was put up at the end of 
the little line of railway, at a cost of $25,000. It 
was 60 feet deep by 40 feet wide, and six stories 
high. 

With a warehouse at each end of the line, with 
all the business credit that I could wish, and with 
the best connections in the world, we were pre- 
pared to do a big business in Melbourne. How 
far we succeeded may be inferred from the fact 

132 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

that my commissions the first year amounted to 
$95,000. 

Melbourne was a small but promising city. It 
had some 20,000 population at the time of the gold- 
fever, and had grown tremendously in the last two 
or three years, so that, in '54, it must have had 
something like 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. It 
was, of course, a frontier town, crude and raw, 
with few of the advantages of civilization. The 
people were too busy with their search for gold 
and profits to think much of the conveniences or 
luxuries of life. The only good hotel, for instance, 
was the Squatters' Hotel, at Port Philip. There 
was not even a merchants' exchange, although one 
was greatly needed. The merchants had simply 
never heard of such a thing. I arranged with 
Salmi Morse, who afterward tried to introduce 
the Passion Play in this country, to assist him in 
putting up a building that could be used for a 
hotel, theater, and mercantile exchange. The 
hotel was the Criterion, and we had a hall in the 
building for the exchange. The latter was the 
means of bringing together ship captains, mer- 
chants, agents, and business men generally, and a 
great stimulus was given to business. 

I was able to introduce into Australia a great 
many articles and ideas from America. I brought 
over from Boston a lot of " Concord " wagons, of 
the same type as the one that *' Ben " Holliday 
drove across the continent, and I told Freeman 

133 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Cobb, who was then with Adams & Co., that I 
wanted him to start a line of coaches between 
Melbourne and the gold-mines, a distance of about 
sixty miles. I advanced the money for the enter- 
prise, and a line was established, the first in Aus- 
tralia, to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Castle 
Maine. These were the first coaches seen in that 
continent. The coaches cost in Australia $3,000 
apiece. 

I had a chaise brought from Boston for my 
own use. It was so light in comparison with the 
great, heavy, lumbering vehicles that were in use 
in all English countries, that the people there said 
it would break down immediately. They had not 
heard of Holmes's " Wonderful One-horse Shay 
that ran a hundred years to a day," and did not, 
of course, know the toughness of all "Yankee" 
things. It didn't break down, and its lightness 
and general serviceableness made it a big adver- 
tisement of American goods. People urged me to 
import a great many vehicles from America. 
Every ship brought out wagons of the Concord 
make, chaises, and vehicles of all sorts. Our car- 
riages and buggies attracted much attention. 
They were the first vehicles of the sort that had 
ever been seen in the country. I sold these at a 
great profit. 

A great disappointment and loss occurred, 
however, through the carelessness of the Amer- 
ican shippers, on one occasion. They had sent a 

134 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

cargo of carriages, and I was certain of a large 
profit on the shipment. What was my surprise 
and horror, on the arrival of the cargo, to discover 
that the stupid shippers had sent only the tops 
of the carriages! The bodies of the vehicles had 
actually been shipped to San Francisco! 

A thing that greatly surprised me, in a land 
of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, was that 
there were no sports in Australia. It seems more 
strange now, after Kipling^s fierce denunciation 
of the " padded fools at the wickets and the mud- 
died oafs at the goal." As I had always been fond 
of outdoor sport, I at once introduced bowling and 
ten-pins, opened an alley and organized a club 
which was composed of Australian bankers — Man- 
ager Blackwood of the Union Bank, MacArthur of 
the Bank of Australia, Badcock of the Bank of 
New South Wales, Bramhall of the London Char- 
tered Bank, O'Shaughnessy of the Bank of Aus- 
tralasia, and Mathieson of the Bank of Victoria. I 
mention these names here merely for convenience, 
and to bring together some of the men with whom 
I was associated in social and in business life in 
Melbourne. They represented some $200,000,000 
of capital. MacArthur had a beautiful bungalow 
four miles out of Melbourne, where he invited me 
to shoot. 

I found living at a hotel very dreary and very 
inconvenient, and decided to have a home of my 
own. So I got a two-story house at Collingwood, 

135 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

near the residence of Governor Latrobe, just out 
of the city. Here I accommodated my clerks, also. 
I took the stewardess, Undine, and the steward 
from one of our ships, and was able to set up quite 
an establishment. The United States consul, J. 
M. Tarleton, and his wife, lived with us for a time. 

After I had been in Melbourne nearly a year 
I was guilty of a small piece of patriotism that 
has ever since seemed very amusing to me. I had 
been reared in the belief that every American-born 
boy has a chance to become President of the United 
States. I had also the idea that a child born out 
of the United States was not, in this sense, Amer- 
ican-born. My wife expected to give birth to a 
child in a few months, and, like most parents, we 
fully expected it would be a son. So what should I 
do, in order not to rob my son of the chance of 
becoming President of his country, but send the 
mother across the seas to Boston, that he might 
be born on the soil of the United States ! It was 
not until some little time after this that I learned 
that nationality follows the parents, and that 
Presidents may be born anywhere, if they are 
careful in the matter of their parents. The ex- 
pected boy was a girl — if I may be pardoned an 
Irish bull. This was my daughter Sue, who could 
never be President, unless the Woman^s Suffrage 
movement moves along very much faster than it 
has up to this time. 

I have not mentioned my partner in the Aus- 
136 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA 

tralian venture, since I said that he and our clerks 
sailed away from Boston for Melbourne on the 
Plymouth Rock — a curious reversal of history, for 
the West was going to exploit the East, and it was 
singular that a vessel with the historic name of 
Plymouth Rock should have been chosen to bear 
this new Argonautic expedition into the South 
Seas. Captain Caldwell, as I have said, was an 
elderly man, sober and conservative. He had been 
a sea-captain for many years, and was a man of 
considerable experience. It was the expectation 
of the Boston shippers that his conservatism 
would serve as a check upon my rashness and ven- 
turesomeness. 

Captain Caldwell, however, did not like Aus- 
tralia, but his presence did not prevent my plung- 
ing into whatever speculation or enterprise seemed 
inviting. The country was full of chances, and I 
should have been stupid, indeed, not to have 
availed myself of them as far as possible. But 
the rough life did not suit Captain Caldwell, 
although he was accustomed to roughing it at sea ; 
and he wanted to return to America. So I con- 
sented to his return. He went in the same ship 
with my wife, the Red Jacket, which, by the way, 
was then to make one of the record-breaking voy- 
ages of the world. Although he had been in Mel- 
bourne only a few months, I gave him $7,500, 
which was the share belonging to him of the esti- 
mated profit in our business. 

137 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

There was still another incident connected with 
this voyage of the Eed Jacket which made it mem- 
orable in my experiences. I have mentioned that 
the phrenologist Bridges said, in England, some 
years before this, that I should become either a 
great reformer or a great pirate. In Melbourne, 
one day, I found myself face to face with a charge 
of piracy ! I was accused of trying to make away 
with some $2,000,000 of gold, which I had put on 
the Red Jacket for shipment to London. 

It happened in this way. It was of course cus- 
tomary to have all bills of lading signed by the 
ship's captain. But Captain Reid, of the Red 
Jacket, had been arrested, at the instance of one 
of the passengers, and the ship was libeled on ac- 
count of a claim. For this reason. Captain Reid 
had not been present to sign the bills of lading. 
In Boston, I had often signed bills of lading in 
the absence of the captain, so I had had no hesi- 
tancy as to my course in this emergency. I con- 
sidered that I had a perfect right to sign the bills, 
and so I did sign them for the $2,000,000 in 
gold, putting it " George Francis Train, for the 
captain." 

Now, the English are a conservative people. 
When they see anything new it " frights " them. 
They can not understand why there should ever 
be occasion for any new thing under the sun. 
When the Melbourne banks saw that I had signed 
the papers, they were scared nearly out of their 

138 



BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTKALIA 

boots. They had never heard of such a proce- 
dure, and thought their insurance was gone. 

But this was not all. The Red Jacket was the 
fastest clipper that had then visited Melbourne, 
and it occurred to these bankers that I was going 
to run off with this gold, and become a Captain 
Kidd or a buccaneering Morgan. They grounded 
their fears upon the facts that my wife was 
aboard, that Captain Caldwell, my partner and 
friend, was also a passenger, and they believed 
that Captain Reid was on board, although under 
arrest. To suspicious bankers, here was a really 
strong case against me. 

In the meanwhile, the Red Jacket, with her 
trim sails bellied with the wind, and sweeping 
along in a way of her own that nothing in the 
South Seas could imitate or approach, was pass- 
ing down Hobson's Bay. The Government and 
the Melbourne authorities despatched two men-of- 
war after her. There was no possibility of her 
being overhauled by these craft, and I gave orders 
to make for Point Nepean. The sheriffs from Mel- 
bourne, who thought Captain Reid was aboard, 
stayed on the ship, but I ordered them put off at 
the Point. They were furious, but could do noth- 
ing, since they could not act for Melbourne at sea 
under the Stars and Stripes. Accordingly, they 
were put on a tug and taken back to Melbourne. 
Immediately after the sheriffs left the boat, a lit- 
tle yacht, the Flying Eagle, with Captain Reid 
11 139 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

aboard, came alongside, and the captain was put 
on tlie Red Jacket, just outside the jurisdiction of 
Australia. 

The Red Jacket caught the wind again, and 
showed her clean heels to the slow-sailing men-of- 
war giving chase. She made the run to Liverpool 
in sixty-four days. 

The authorities and the bankers of Melbourne 
did not like the proceedings at all, but saw that 
they could do nothing. There was great anxiety 
in Australia for two months and more. When it 
was learned that the $2,000,000 of gold had been 
landed in Liverpool without the loss of a farthing, 
I was heartily congratulated, although the British 
spirit never forgave the taking of matters into 
my own hands and making the best of a bad situa- 
tion. Their conservatism had received a shock. 



140 



CHAPTER XI 

THE GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES AND 

TASMANIA 

1853-1855 

During my stay in Melbourne the gold-fever 
was at its height. I was particularly interested 
in the mines, and went to Ballarat to see how the 
British managed these things. It was while I was 
there, as it happened, that the great " bonanza 
nugget " was discovered. I shall never forget the 
impression that this discovery and its tragic end- 
ing made upon my mind. It is a story that the 
world has heard many times, perhaps, and as 
many times forgotten ; but for one who felt its ter- 
rible lesson stamped hot upon his heart, it is un- 
forgetable. 

There were lucky and unlucky miners in Aus- 
tralia, as there have been everywhere else in the 
world^s gold-fields. Many found great nuggets 
that contained fortunes — " infinite riches in a lit- 
tle room " — while many more found nothing but 
infinite hardship and heart-breaking misery. 
Among the army of broken men, there was a 

141 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" hobo " named Hooligan who had not found 
any gold, could no longer find even work, and was 
starving. One day he went to the owners of a 
mine or shaft that had been worked out, and asked 
permission to go down to try his luck. They con- 
sented. The desperate fellow took his pick and 
descended to the bottom of the shaft. In a few 
minutes he was worth a fortune. He had found 
the biggest nugget ever taken out of the earth^s 
treasure-house. Two hundred feet below the sur- 
face of the ground, he had driven his pick, by 
merest chance, against a lump of gold that would 
have transmuted Midas' s wand into better metal. 

He came up out of the shaft, knowing that he 
had found a pretty big sum, but did not realize 
how much it was. The nugget was brought up 
and weighed. It had exactly the weight of a barrel 
of flour, 196 pounds. He was rich. That morn- 
ing he had been a beggar, and now he was the 
richest miner in the fields. They weighed the gold 
carefully, and told him that he was a rich man. 

" Is — all — that — mine ? " he asked, as if the 
words were as heavy as the big nugget and as val- 
uable. They told him it was. " It doesn't belong 
to the Government?" "No." "All mine," he 
said in a whisper, and dropped to the floor, dead. 

No one knew him. His name even was not 
known. He was a mere restless wanderer upon 
the face of the earth, and had broken his heart 
over the biggest nugget, the richest piece of gold, 

142 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

on the globe. And so the nugget became the prop- 
erty of the Government, after all. 

Capt. David D. Porter, who was afterward ad- 
miral of the United States navy, visited Mel- 
bourne while I was there, and I gave him a recep- 
tion, at which he met the prominent people of the 
colony. He was a relative of mine. I was very 
proud of him then, though more so later. He was 
in command of the Golden Age, which was after- 
ward famous for the Black Warrior incident. 
He invited my wife and myself to go with him in 
his ship to Sydney, New South Wales. We had a 
delightful trip around the island. The ship made 
as great a sensation in Sydney as it had made in 
Melbourne. The American flag had rarely been 
seen above a man-of-war in those waters. At Syd- 
ney we met Sir Charles Fitzroy, Governor of New 
South Wales, as well as prominent people in civil 
and official life. Sir Charles Fitzroy was a sur- 
vival of the old " beau " da^^s of the court of the 
last of the Georges, and had the heavy courtesy of 
that time, when everything said or done was ac- 
companied by a low bow and a gracious smile. He 
entertained us handsomely at Government House. 
We were also entertained by Sir Charles Nichol- 
son, at his beautiful country seat. I had the pecul- 
iar pleasure, while in Australia, of fulfilling one 
of the prophecies of Sidney Smith, made when he 
had been editor of the Quarterly Review some forty 
years before. He said, I remembered, that in half 

143 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

a century cargoes of tea — the luxury that England 
of his day and ours regards as an infallible evi- 
dence of civilization — would be landed at the 
docks of Sydney. He referred to Port Jackson, 
which is now dominated by the thriving city of 
Sydney, and was then one of the most promising 
ports of the South Seas. I was, at that time, re- 
ceiving tea on consignment from Nye, of Canton, 
China, called the "Napoleon of tea trade,'^ and 
it occurred to me that Australia should be a 
good market for it. Three cargoes came from 
Canton, with instructions that if the market at 
Melbourne proved unfavorable, one of the cargoes 
should be shipped to Sydney. It was accordingly 
sent there, fulfilling the prophecy of Sydney 
Smith, and opening the tea trade of that portion 
of Australia. 

Sir Charles Nicholson, before we were there, 
entertained Commodore Wilkes, who was visiting 
Australia, and who afterward stirred up Great 
Britain by removing forcibly from the British 
mail-steamer Trent the Confederate States' agents, 
Mason and Slidell. I was surprised to find in the 
harbor two of our old packets, the Anglo-Ameri- 
can and the Washington Irving, Captain Cald- 
well's packet, under changed names. They had 
been sold to English shipowners. 

Sydney was not a large place at this time, al- 
though it was growing fast. It may be well to 
recall here that it had been founded as a penal 

144 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

colony, the effects of which had not entirely passed 
away at the time of my visit, although no convicts 
had arrived since '41, I believe. The influence of 
Botany Bay had also been felt by Sydney. I was 
struck by the beautiful, narrow, rock-bound en- 
trance to the harbor. It gives to the port many 
miles of seashore, and is so winding that when 
Captain Cook, who discovered it, sailed in and 
anchored in Botany Bay, some of his sailors re- 
ported that they saw from the masthead a large 
inland lake in the interior. The " lake " proved 
to be only an apparent one, produced by one of 
the many windings of the beautiful, sinuous arm 
of the sea, eventually to hold in its embrace the 
fine city of Sydney. 

We returned from Sydney to Melbourne after 
a short but delightful visit. Shortly after leav- 
ing port we ran into one of the most terrific storms 
I have ever experienced. It was the right time 
of the year for gales to appear, and this one, as is 
characteristic of the wild nature of the South 
Seas, seemed to spring from a clear sky and un- 
ruffled waters. If our boat had been one of the 
usual type of merchantmen, it must certainly have 
gone down. But the Golden Age was stanch and 
strong. She battled with the seas as with a 
human foe. In spite of her seaworthiness, how- 
ever, almost every one aboard thought she could 
not withstand the repeated shock of waves that 
tumbled in mountains against her bows. 

145 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

In the midst of the storm, I saw one of the 
most prominent and richest merchants of Sydney 
coming across the deck, thrown hither and thither 
by the tossings of the ship, and carrying in his 
hands a very heavy package. " For the love of 
goodness, what have yon there ? " I asked in 
amazement. He made no direct reply, and I 
thought him too much terrified to speak, but he 
finally came close up to me and said : " Mr. Train, 
I know you have some influence here on the ship. 
I have brought with me one thousand sovereigns. 
They are here " — and he tapped the bag he carried 
in his hands. " I want you to go with me to the 
captain and give him this amount for putting me 
off in a small boat." " A small boat would not live 
a minute in this sea," I said. "I am prepared," 
he replied, "to take my chances, as it would be 
better there than here, for the ship may go down 
any moment." I refused to go to the captain with 
so foolish a request, and urged him to be calm, as 
the ship was stout and would weather the storm. 
He could not calm himself, but fretted and fumed 
in terror. As fortune favored us, the gale sud- 
denly stopped, sweeping on away from us as swift- 
ly as it had come. The rich merchant soon took 
his thousand sovereigns back to his room. 

I have stated already that I was the agent for 
Boston insurance people. This, of course, made 
me somewhat solicitous about the safety of all ves- 
sels in those waters. One morning the entire city 

146 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

of Melbourne was startled by the news that a great 
clipper had gone down or ashore on Flinder's Is- 
land, off Point Nepean. Later we learned that she 
was ashore, and that signals of distress were fly- 
ing from her masthead and rigging. Of course, 
I was much alarmed, and began at once to see 
what could be done to save the ship and crew. I 
got a tug, and was soon taking a rescue party down 
Hobson's Bay. We steamed as fast as the tug's 
engines would carry her through the driving seas. 
As we neared the wreck, we saw that the ship was 
the Whistler from Boston. She seemed to be a 
complete wreck, and with our glasses we could not 
discover any sign of life aboard her. 

I did not give up the venture there, however, 
but directed the captain of the tugboat to make 
directly for the island. I had a vague hope that 
the crew had somehow managed to get ashore in 
the boats or on floating timbers. The captain did 
not relish this part of his work, and his fears 
were soon justified, for we very narrowly escaped 
shipwreck ourselves in the wild seas. We had, 
finally, to wait until the waves went down a little, 
before attempting to land on Flinder's Island. We 
got up as near as we could, however, and then we 
saw signals flying from shore. We signaled in 
reply, and the wrecked crew understood that we 
were waiting for the sea to run less wildly before 
attempting to reach land. 

The wind died down slowly, and it was hours 
147 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

before we could approach the coast. As soon as 
possible, I got out with a crew in a small boat and 
went to the island. We had a most difficult time 
in getting through the surf and avoiding the break- 
ers, but we finally reached shore. There we found 
Captain Brown with his wife, the ship's officers 
and the crew, all alive and well. They had man- 
aged to live on shell-fish and wallaby — the small 
bush kangaroos. They had not been able to take 
anything from the ship, and could not, of course, 
reach her after she had been abandoned. We got 
them all aboard the tug, and carried them safely to 
Melbourne. The American consul afterward sent 
them all home by way of Liverpool. This was the 
second rescue of shipwrecked crew and passengers 
that I had made, and I felt a little too proud of it, 
I suppose. 

About this time the British and Colonial Gov- 
ernments decided to settle Tasmania with free emi- 
grants. The idea was to pay the expenses of all 
who wanted to go to that island, and the Govern- 
ments made a contract with the White Star Line 
to transport the settlers. The British Government 
was to pay one half the expense, and the Colonial 
Government the remainder. The contract was 
signed by Henry T. Wilson, manager of the White 
Star Line, the sailing-ship pioneers of Morgan's 
mammoth steamship combination, who sent all 
the papers to me at Melbourne, as representing 
the company, to see that the terms of the agree- 

148 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 



ment were carried out. He also requested me to 
go to Hobart Town (now called Hobart) to be 
there when the first ship-load of emigrants ar- 
rived to collect the money for the passage. I im- 
mediately took steamer for Hobart Town, and 
I shall never forget the pleasure of that voyage. 
It was a revelation. The trip up the estuary to 
Hobart Town was delightful, and the scenery, 
I think, was altogether the most charming 
I had seen in the Southern world. At Hobart 
Town I was received by Mr. Chapman, a shipping 
merchant, to whom I had written in advance, and 
he made me stay with him at his beautiful bunga- 
low, on the crest of a high hill, commanding a fine 
view of the city. 

The emigrants arrived in excellent condition. 
They were the first free settlers of Tasmania. 
There had not been a death aboard ship, and the 
moment the newcomers arrived they were em- 
ployed, for the city of Hobart Town was very 
thriving, and there was an abundance of work to 
be done. I again had the pleasure of feeling that 
in this, as in other enterprises, I was an argonaut 
and a pioneer. 

I was astonished to find so many persons of 
prominence, especially in the world of letters, set- 
tled in this far-away colony of England. At Ho- 
bart Town I found the Powers, the Howitts 
(whose books were then tremendously popular), 
and Thorne, the author of Orion. Then, as now, 

149 



MY LIFE IN MAISFY STATES 

this colony was regarded as the most pleasant por- 
tion of the vast possessions of Great Britain in the 
Sonth Seas. The climate and the aspects of the 
country were far more pleasant than those of Aus- 
tralia, some fifty miles distant across Bass Straits. 

At the time of my visit the whole world was 
talking about the various efforts being made to dis- 
cover the remains of the ill-fated expedition to the 
North Pole that had been led by the former gov- 
ernor of Tasmania, the much-beloved Sir John 
Franklin. He had gone to the north in 1845, and 
nothing had been heard of him since. His wife 
was supposed to be mourning for him in solitude. 

Curiosity led me to the house where this fa- 
mous governor and adventurous explorer had 
lived, and the janitor, a trusted old servant, 
showed me over the building. It was one of those 
enormous structures which the English build for 
the edification and amazement of the natives in 
their colonies. I had heard and read a great deal 
about Sir John and the lovely woman that was 
mourning his long absence, and I entered the silent 
house with a feeling that I was trespassing upon 
a great and unutterable grief. Imagine my aston- 
ishment — I may say, horror — to learn that Lady 
Franklin, or Lady Jane, as she was generally 
called, had for years lived at one end of the long 
house, while Sir John had lived at the other, and 
that, as the story went, they had not spoken to 
each other for years. She seemed certainly to 

150 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

have had the grace to assume a virtue she did not 
possess, and apparently mourned her lost lord for 
years, and spent much of her time in liberal chari- 
ties. This is the first time I have referred in any 
way to this unknown unhappiness of Sir John 
Franklin. It was not known to many people in 
Tasmania at the time, and I suppose that it is 
known now only to members of the two families, 
the Franklins and the Griffins. 

As I had come half around the island of Tas- 
mania, approaching Hobart Town from the sea, 
I had seen nothing of the interior of the country, 
so I determined — after finishing my business in 
Hobart Town — to cross the island to Launceston. 
There is now a railway running directly across, 
but at that time there was only a stage route. 
Stages ran every other day. I engaged passage 
in the mail-coach, the same style of coach that had 
been used for hundreds of years in England and 
Scotland, still as rough and cumbersome as when 
first devised. There, too, was the old Tudor 
driver and the Restoration guard. Nothing was 
wanting. The coach looked to me as if it had been 
taken from behind the scenes of some old comedy 
— a piece of stage property. 

But if the stage was antiquated and out of 
touch with the modern stir of the world, the driver 
was not. I asked him what he thought would be 
the proper thing in the way of a " tip," as I did 
not know the ways of Tasmania. " That depends, 

151 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

sir," he said, "upon whom we are riding with." 
That settled the business for me, for my tip then 
had to be a sort of measure of my self-esteem. I 
was literally cornered, and had to give him a big 
tip, in sheer self-defense. 

The road to Launceston was an excellent one, 
a macadam built by convicts, and the scenery was 
the most beautiful I had seen in Australasia. 
.When I arrived at Launceston I had to get a pass 
to leave the country, as it had been necessary to 
have a passport to enter it. The British were very 
particular whom they permitted to leave Tas- 
mania, and whom they allowed to go there. 

Near Launceston I saw the room in which 
Francis, who was afterward a member of the 
cabinet of the colony of Victoria and one of 
the ablest and most energetic men of Australasia, 
had his famous and terrible fight with a burglar. 
Tliis fight has become a tradition all over the colo- 
nies and is still recalled as one of the thrilling 
experiences of early days. One night Francis 
heard a noise in his dining-room. He was up late, 
studying in his library, and as the country was 
infested by desperate convicts who had escaped 
from the camps, he at once went to the room to 
see whether a burglar had broken in. 

Peering through the keyhole, he saw a man 
with a dark lantern putting the family plate into 
a bag. Francis came to a decision at once as to 
what to do. He would enter the room, and fight 

152 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

it out with the robber. Silently opening the door, 
he entered, and then quickly locked the door and 
threw away the key. Immediately there was a 
desperate fight. The burglar finding himself en- 
trapped, turned upon Francis and tried to kill him 
with a huge knife. Francis caught his arm, and 
a struggle to the death began. Several times the 
burglar wrenched his hand free and slashed at 
Francis, but the plucky fellow did not flinch. He 
fought until he had conquered the robber, threw 
him to the floor, and bound his hands behind him. 
Francis was himself so badly cut that he was in 
sight of death for weeks. 

The exploits of the convict Tracy out in Ore- 
gon remind me of a far more terrible case in Aus- 
tralia that occurred while I was there. The coun- 
try was a sort of frontier, in the Western sense, 
from one end to the other. It was quite possible 
that a desperate convict lurked in every patch of 
bush, who would as soon kill you as ask for bread. 
But news came to Melbourne one day that a con- 
vict had escaped in a peculiarly terrifying man- 
ner. He was no ordinary man. He had coolly 
killed two jailers, or guards, having taken from 
them their own weapons. Then, going to the 
water, he ordered a boatman to row him out to a 
vessel so that he might escape from the country. 
The boatman, not knowing the character of the 
man he was dealing with, refused, and was shot 
dead instantly. The fugitive then rowed out to 

153 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the vessel in the dead man's boat, and demanded 
of the captain that he take him aboard and carry 
him to Melbourne. The captain refused, and he 
also was shot dead, and with loaded pistol the con- 
vict then compelled the mate to take him to Mel- 
bourne. After he landed he began a forlorn at- 
tempt to save himself from his pursuers. 

This beginning in his career of murder was 
sufficiently terrible to give the entire region a 
shock, when it became known that he was at large 
and headed for Melbourne. He was next heard 
of when he reached Hobson's Bay at Sandridge. 
Here he found a farmer plowing in the field. The 
convict needed his horse, and shooting the farmer, 
rode away. Another farmer followed him, and in 
turn was killed. 

By this time, of course, the whole country was 
aroused — even the police — and parties were hur- 
riedly formed to capture the murderers, for no 
one at the time could believe that it was only one 
man who was committing all these crimes. When 
he was last seen, he was heading, apparently, for 
Ballarat, where, perhaps, he hoped to be joined by 
other men as desperate as himself. Ballarat was 
about one hundred miles distant, and a posse start- 
ed in pursuit. Nothing was heard or seen of the 
convict for fifty miles, when one of the party saw 
a man near a squatter's hut carrying another man 
in his arms. This seemed to be a somewhat cu- 
rious proceeding, and the posse immediately closed 

154 



GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES 

in about the man. Just as did Tracy, this man 
shot the leader of the party. The others then 
pushed ahead and captured him before he could 
kill any one else. In the hut they found nine men, 
tied with ropes. It was not understood what use 
the convict expected to make of them. All were 
uninjured. At the time of his capture, the con- 
vict had killed fourteen men. 



12 155 



CHAPTER XII 

OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS — A REVOLUTION 

Once I tried to be President of the United 
States. Before that I had been offered the presi- 
dency of the Australian Republic. It is true that 
there was no Australian Republic at that exact 
moment, but it looked to thousands that there 
might be one very soon. There was a revolution, 
or, as it should be called, a rebellion, for it was 
unsuccessful, in which I had taken no part or 
shown any sympathy, but the revolutionists, or 
rebels, offered me the chieftaincy of their govern- 
ment, as soon as they could establish it. 

It came about in this way. In '54 the miners 
in the fields of Ballarat and Bendigo were in a 
state of intense ferment. They were discontented 
with existing conditions — their luck in the mines, 
the way they were treated by the Government and 
the mine proprietors, and especially by the utter 
failure of the Government to protect them in their 
rights against the capitalists. The particular 
cause of quarrel, however, was the licenses. 

156 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

When I went to Australia, the reader may 
easily believe, there was very little feeling for, or 
knowledge of, the United States. I at once un- 
dertook to spread the gospel of Americanism, and 
introduced the celebration of the Fourth of July. 
The colonists of England have always been quite 
friendly to the people^ of the United States, hav- 
ing a kindred feeling, and all of them have been 
looking forward to a day when they, too, might 
have a free country to claim for their own, and not 
merely a red spot on the map of Great Britain. 
For this reason, the Australians took kindly to the 
idea of celebrating the independence of the United 
States, as formerly a colony of Great Britain. 

When the miners, who had heard of my 
" spread-eagleism," as it has since been called, 
started their little revolt against the government 
of the British, they thought of me and offered me 
the presidency of the republic they wanted to 
create. In the meantime, they elected me their 
representative in the colonial legislature of the 
miners about Maryborough, where they held a 
great meeting. I could not have taken my seat if 
I had desired it, and as I did not desire it, of 
course I declined. The imaginary presidency I 
declined, also, as I neither wanted it, nor could I 
have obtained it. The "Five-Star Republic," as 
it was called, was not to be anything but a dream, 
and the "revolution" of Ballarat was only a 
nightmare. 

157 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

Soon after I declined these honors, there was 
a terrible riot at Ballarat. The whole mining 
district had risen against the Government, as La- 
trobe, the governor, had made himself most un- 
popular by his policy of procrastination. Every- 
thing connected with the mining fields, he seemed 
to think, could as well be looked after next year 
as this. The resentment of the miners had at last 
become uncontrollable. But, slow as they were 
about redressing the grievances of the miners, 
the British were fast enough in the business of 
protecting themselves and in putting down dis- 
turbances with a firm and heavy hand. Latrobe 
waited until the thing had almost got beyond him. 
He felt that he was all right with the old " squat- 
ters," whom he understood and who understood 
him; but he did not realize that the new element, 
the thousands of miners that had floated in from 
every nation of the globe, did not understand him 
or his ways. They were accustomed to having 
matters attended to with despatch, and could not 
tolerate the slow conservatism and unchangeable- 
ness of the English civil office. Personally he was 
a good man J but otherwise, he was as I have de- 
scribed. 

The first fruits of the dilatory policy was the 
sacrifice of forty men. Captain Wise and forty 
of his troops were cut to pieces by the enraged 
miners, who had suddenly risen to fight for their 
rights. Governor Latrobe immediately called for 

158 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

troops from New Zealand, Tasmania, and New- 
South Wales, to quell the rioters. The want of 
preparation of the revolters at once became ap- 
parent, and it was known that they had sent emis- 
saries into Melbourne itself to buy arms and am- 
munition. The head of the insurrection was James 
McGill, who was an American citizen. He had dis- 
appeared from the neighborhood of Ballarat, and a 
reward of one thousand pounds sterling had been 
offered for his capture, dead or alive. In Mel- 
bourne there was almost a panic. Rumors were 
that the forests were filled with armed men march- 
ing to the destruction of the place. There were, it 
was authentically reported, 800 armed men at 
Warren Heap, about eighty miles distant, who 
were supposed to be meditating a raid. People 
hastened to secrete their jewelry, gold was placed 
in vaults, the banks were guarded, and a special 
police force was sworn in. 

Just as the excitement was at its height, it was 
reported that James McGill was in the neighbor- 
hood of the city. I was sitting in my office one 
morning, during these days of fear, when a man 
walked in, as cool as if he were merely going to 
discuss the weather or some trifle of business. " I 
hear," he said, " that you have some $80,000 worth 
of Coitus revolvers in stock, and I have been sent 
down here to get them." I glanced up at the man, 
and took him in a little more closely. It came to 
me in a flash who he was. " Do you know," said 

159 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I, " that there is a reward offered for your head 
of one thousand pounds? " " That does not mean 
anything," he said, and smiled as if it were a joke. 
" They can not do anything," he added, as if to 
allay any fears that I might have. 

I again took him in, and thought of my $60,000 
warehouse that we were then standing in, of the 
$25,000 warehouse at the other end of the railway, 
and of all my interests in Melbourne, under which 
we were placing a powder mine, and playing over 
it with lighted torches. " This will not do," I said. 
"You have no right to compromise me in this 
way." "We have elected you president of our 
republic," he added. " Damn the republic I " said 
I. "Do you mean to tell me that you refuse to 
be our chief?" said he. "I do," I said. "I am 
not here to lead or encourage revolutions, but to 
carry on my business. I have nothing whatever to 
do with governments or politics; and you must 
get out of here, if you do not want to be hanged 
yourself, and ruin me." I told him there was not 
the slightest possibility of success, as Great Brit- 
ain would crush the revolt by sheer weight of men, 
if she could not beat its leaders in any other way. 

Just then there came a rap at the door, which 
I had taken the precaution to close and lock. I 
hurried to the door and asked who was there, and 
the reply was that it was Captain McMahon, chief 
of police. He said to me : " Do you know that 
rascal McGill is in the city ? His men are at War- 

160 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

ren Heap, but he himself has actually come into 
Melbourne ! I want a dozen of those Concord wag- 
ons of yours immediately/^ I made a motion of 
my hand to make McGill understand that he must 
keep quiet. Then I began to talk rapidly with the 
chief of police, and took him to the farther end of 
the warehouse, shutting the door of my office be- 
hind us. No more wagons were there, for 
the Government had already got all I had, but I 
wanted time to think. When we had looked 
around, and had seen that there were no wagons, 
Captain McMahon left, and I hurried back to 
McGill. 

" Now, McGill," I said, " I am not going to be- 
tray you, but am going to save your life. You 
must do as I tell you." He looked at me for a 
moment, and said, " But I am not going back on 
my comrades." " You will have no comrades soon, 
but will be in the hands of the officers yourself, if 
you do not do exactly as I tell you." He finally 
consented to do as I advised. 

As soon as I saw that the way was clear, I took 
him out into the street to the nearest barber, where 
I had his hair cut and his mustache shaved ofP, and 
then made him put on a workman's suit of clothes. 
We then got into my chaise, and I drove him down 
to the bay and took him aboard one of our ships 
that was about to sail, and told the men that I had 
brought a new stevedore. McGill pitched in and 
worked along with the men, and there was nothing 

161 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

to show that he was in any way connected with 
the revolution of Ballarat, much less its leader. 

Three days later the ship sailed, and McGill 
went on through England to America. This ended 
the whole affair of the revolution, the chase of the 
leader, and my chance of being President of the 
Five-Star Eepublic ! 

One day a man, wearing a jaunty silk hat, came 
into my office. " I see you bring in rum from New 
England," said he. "How much have you on 
hand I" I went over the invoices, and told him. 
He then asked if I gave the same terms as other 
dealers in Melbourne. "Yes," said I; "cash." 
" Oh, no," said he. " I get three months' time." 
He showed me a contract he had just signed with 
Denniston Brothers & Co., of New York, repre- 
sented in Melbourne by McCullagh & Sellars, for 
£3,000 payable in three months. I was astonished. 
The house had branches in all of the great cities 
of the world. I told the gentlemanly-looking fel- 
low who wanted the rum that if Denniston could 
afford to trust him for $15,000, 1 thought we could 
trust him for $3,000. I took pains to see, however, 
that our paper bore an earlier date than that of 
Denniston. But this precaution amounted to noth- 
ing against this shrewd manipulator. He gave his 
name as John Boyd. 

By the end of the week, I began to grow a little 
suspicious, and sent my clerk to the office of Mr. 
Boyd early on Monday morning. The office was 

162 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

closed, and there was no Mr. Boyd there. He had 
gone to Sydney, and that was the last seen of 
Boyd in Australia. He had ^^ buncoed " us and 
Denniston & Co. in the easiest sort of way. I 
really felt cheated, it was done so smoothly. I 
had not got the worth of my money, as I should 
have done had I been harder to deceive. There 
had been no sport in that. 

I next heard of Boyd at Singapore ; but I was 
to run up against him later. In '61, when I was 
giving a junketing trip to some people on the 
Union Pacific road, and a party of us were on the 
steamboat St. Joseph going to Omaha, a man came 
up to me and claimed an acquaintance. Although 
more than twelve years had passed, I recognized 
him at once as the John Boyd who had got the bet- 
ter of me in that little trade in Melbourne. I pre- 
tended not to know him. I suppose he assumed 
that the matter had passed out of my mind and 
that his face was no longer familiar to me. He 
coolly gave me his address on a card, and when I 
looked at it I saw " Noble & Co., Bankers, Des 
Moines, Iowa." I knew him by his broken nose, 
that would have betrayed him at the ends of the 
earth. 

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most in Australia 
was the introduction of American articles — " Yan- 
kee notions," the people there called them — into 
Australia, even against the prejudice of the col- 
onists. They would fight hard against everything 

163 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

that was new or American, but I took a delight in 
overcoming their bias, and forcing them to accept 
our ideas. I made a calculation once of the things 
that I had introduced into Australia, and they 
amounted to something like fifty. Among these 
were such common things as the light wagon, the 
buggy, shovels, and hoes, and — wonderful to think 
of when one hears and reads so much in these days 
of the " tins " that the British army consumes — 
tinned, or canned, goods. These had not been 
heard of, and I saw at once that there was a fine 
chance for some profitable business. English 
packers could not begin to compete with us. On 
one cargo that I brought in from New London, 
Conn., we made a profit of 200 per cent. And now 
" Tommy Atkins " lives on the " tins " that we in- 
troduced as a method of carrying provisions from 
one end of the world to the other. 

I suppose that it was from a part of the returns 
from this profitable shipment that the owners of 
the goods founded the Soldiers* Home at Noro- 
ton. Conn., during the civil war. I must record 
here a curious incident. It was in this home that 
a soldier carved a most elaborate design upon a 
cane which he gave to me, showing in brief out- 
line the whole of my history. It was a wonderful 
piece of work, and I have kept it as a souvenir of 
the regard of this soldier in the home that was 
probably founded in part with the proceeds of the 
first great shipment of canned goods into Austra- 

164 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

lia, and of my part in introducing this new trade 
into the South Seas. 

I had the opportunity of meeting some famous 
and curious people in Australia. On one of the 
celebrations of the 17th of March, I met a great 
many Irish patriots, among them Smith O'Brien, 
John Martin, and Donohue. I was an invited 
guest, and sat down with more than two hundred 
of the most prominent Irishmen of the Austral- 
asian colonies. When Smith O'Brien was in an 
Irish jail in '48, I asked him for his autograph. I 
have made it a point to collect the autographs of 
all the famous men and women I have met, and 
now have, perhaps, the finest collection of auto- 
graphs to be seen in this country. O'Brien im- 
mediately wrote on a card the following verse : 

"Whether on a gallows high, 
Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place for man to die, 
Is where he dies for man." 

This sentiment of the Irish poet was peculiarly 
appropriate for men, who, like the patriots and 
** rebels " about me, were facing prison or death 
at every hour. 

I shall bring together here some incidents of 
my life in Australia that are not closely connected 
with other events there. We made some tremen- 
dous profits in Melbourne, the sort that makes 
one's blood tingle, and transforms cool men into 
wild speculators. I have already mentioned the 

165 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

profit of 200 per cent on the cargo of canned 
goods. On a cargo of flour from Boston, 7,000 
barrels, we made a profit of 200 per cent, the flour 
selling for £4 sterling the barrel. This flour had 
been shipped to us through John M. Forbes, of 
Boston, for Philo Shelton and Moses Taylor, the 
millionaire of New York. 

When I returned to New York in '57, during 
the panic, I met Taylor in Wall Street. He must 
have been in terrible need of money to keep his 
head above water, and he at once said to me: 
" Why did you charge me 7^ per cent commission 
for handling that cargo of flour in Melbourne ? " 
I looked at him in astonishment. He had forgot- 
ten the enormous profit he had made on the ship- 
ment, and remembered now only the small matter 
of the commission he had been compelled to pay. 

I replied that the commission was our usual 
charge. He told me he was buying up his own 
paper in the street, and was not in temporary dis- 
tress. " I do not think you should have charged 
me more than 5 per cent commission," he said. I 
was disgusted at this view of a transaction that 
had brought him in a profit that would have been 
considered marvelous even by a usurer. "All 
right," I said, "I will give you the difference 
now." And I gave him a check for $2,500. 

I met a large number of actors and actresses 
in Melbourne, for it was quite the custom as early 
as that for stars of the stage, whether tragedians 

166 



OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

like Edwin Booth, or dancers like Lola Montez, to 
make a tour of the world and take in Australia on 
the circuit. I was astonished to meet Booth and 
Laura Keene, " stranded/^ one day, although they 
had made a successful tour in England. They did 
not appeal to the rough audiences of Australia, 
and so did not have enough money to take them 
back to the States. It so happened that I had 
just bought the City of Norfolk to send to San 
Francisco as the pioneer of a new line, which is 
now thoroughly established, and making rapid pas- 
sages between the two ports. I gave them free 
passage to San Francisco. Laura Keene frequent- 
ly mentioned the fact in " asides " on the stage, 
but I never received a word of thanks or apprecia- 
tion from Booth. Kate Hayes and Bushnell also 
visited Australia while I was there, and I gave 
them a concert and started them off on their tour. 
But the greatest sensation that was created in 
the theatrical world of Australia during my stay 
was made by Lola Montez, the dancer from Mad- 
rid. She danced and pirouetted on the necks 
and hearts of men. The rough mining element 
went wild over her, and she had the wealth and 
rank of Melbourne at her feet. One morning she 
burst into my office, and called out in her quaint 
accent, " Is Mr. George Francis Train here? Tell 
him that I am his old friend from Boston, and 
that I have just arrived from San Francisco." She 
had called to make a complaint against the captain 

167 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of our sMp, whom she wanted us to discharge for 
some supposed discourtesy to her. We patched 
up this quarrel, and I did everything I could to 
insure her a successful season in Melbourne. She 
had a tremendous vogue, and danced before 
crowded houses. 

One night I called at the green-room of the 
theater to see her, sending in my card. I had 
seated myself on the sofa to wait until she finished 
her dancing. Suddenly the door flew open, and 
in rushed something that looked like a great ball 
of feathers. This ball flew toward me and I was 
enveloped in a cloud of lace! The bold little 
dancer had thrown her foot over my head ! 

My life in Australia, now drawing to a close, 
as I had made arrangements for leaving there to 
continue my business operations in Japan, had 
been very charming and profitable. Everything 
was novel and strange to me, and it all made a 
deep and lasting impression upon my mind, which 
was then eagerly receptive. 

I find, in recalling these impressions, that my 
first idea of Australia still remains the most prom- 
inent one left in my memory. Australia was truly 
the antipodes. Everything seemed to be reversed, 
a topsy-turvy land. At Botany Bay I was aston- 
ished to find the swans were black, thereby de- 
molishing our beautiful ideas about " milk-white " 
swans. The birds talked, screamed, or brayed, in- 
stead of singing, and the trees shed their bark in- 

168 



OTHEH AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS 

stead of their leaves. The big end of the pears 
was at the stem, and cherry-stones grew on the 
outside of the fruit. I was sitting one day in the 
garden of the governor-general when I thought I 
felt some one tap me on the shoulder. Then my 
coat was wrenched off my back, and I turned just 
in time to see it disappear down the throat of a 
tame Australian ostrich, called an emu. The bird 
had taken me for a vegetable. 

Sidney Smith describes the kangaroo as an ani- 
mal with the head of a rabbit, the body of a deer, a 
tail like a bed-post, and which, when in danger, puts 
its young into a pocket in its stomach. But the 
most marvelous of all the queer things of Austra- 
lia, to my mind, was the animal that laid eggs like 
a hen, suckled its young like a goat, and was web- 
footed, like a duck. This was the duckbill, or water- 
mole, which the Australians called the Patybus. 

I also saw in Tasmania, and on Flinder's Is- 
land, the race of men that was then considered the 
most remarkable on the globe, the original Tasma- 
nian savages; and I saw, also, the most curious 
weapon that man has ever invented, the boomer- 
ang. Holmes has described this weapon in one of 
his humorous verses: 

**The boomerang, which the Australian throws, 
Cuts its own circle, and hits you on the nose." 

I got one of the Bushmen to throw his boomerang 
for me. He threw it around a tree and the missile 
came back toward us. I fully expected to be sent 

169 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

sprawling. It dropped almost at the feet of the 
savage that threw it. Even gold in that land is 
found where it all ends in our country — in 
pockets ! 

Before closing the account of my Australian 
experiences, I want to record that when I arrived 
in Melbourne that flourishing port was in a hor- 
rible condition for a city of its size and impor- 
tance. Its streets were such as would not have 
been tolerated in an American city of half its size 
or one tenth its wealth. There were practically 
no public works. After I had been there for some 
little time, a plan was put on foot to improve the 
city. It moved along very slowly, as no one 
seemed to know exactly what to do, or how to do 
it. Finally, an elaborate program was drawn up, 
and all that was needed to carry it out was the 
money, which would have to be borrowed. 

The chairman of the improvement committee, 
or whatever it was called, came to see me to get 
me to undertake the floating of the necessary loan. 
I suggested a number of improvements, such as 
fire-engines, better office buildings, better paved 
streets, and new gas-works. All of these sugges- 
tions were accepted, and I forecast the floating 
of the loan. They got the money in London, and 
Melbourne was remodeled, so far as its appear- 
ance was concerned, and was finally made one of 
the most attractive cities in the British colonies. 
It now has a population of half a million. 

170 



CHAPTER XIII 

A VOYAGE TO CHINA 
1855 

I HAVE already referred to my purpose of 
going to Japan to establish a branch business 
there. This idea came to me in Australia, after 
Commodore Perry had opened the country to for- 
eigners. It has always been my desire to be first 
on the ground, and I saw that Japan offered the 
greatest possible opportunities for trade of all 
sorts. I had fixed upon Yokohama as the place 
in which to open our branch house. The rapid 
development of that city since then, under new 
conditions, and the tremendous increase of its 
trade with Europe and America, as well as with 
India, China, and Australasia, have well justified 
my early judgment. I knew we could acquire great 
influence in the world of commerce, and become, 
perhaps, the greatest shipping house of the globe, 
with branch houses at Boston, Liverpool, Mel- 
bourne, and Yokohama. 

This is as good a place as any to give the rea- 
sons for the failure of these ambitious plans. I 
13 171 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

had gradually worked out the whole program, giv- 
ing to it hours and days of careful and painstaking 
examination. I felt that the scheme was abso- 
lutely safe from every point of view. It was big 
and almost grandiose ; but I felt it was sure to re- 
sult in vast fortunes, in the building up of a trade 
that the world had never before conceived or 
dreamed of, and in the development of American 
commerce. 

In fact, I see now that I was more than half 
a century ahead of J. Pierpont Morgan. I should 
have formed a great shipping and navigation 
business that would have dwarfed anything else 
of the kind in the world. My plan was not lim- 
ited to a few lines of ships between Europe and 
New York. It was not confined to an Atlantic 
ferry. I foresaw, as I fancied, American ships 
dominating the trade of all oceans. I saw the 
American merchant flag in every port of the Pa- 
cific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, and doing the 
carrying trade of the world. I had some such 
vague idea when I introduced the fast clipper 
service between Boston, New York, and San Fran- 
cisco, and, again, when I organized the fast sailing- 
ship service between Boston and Australia. But 
I did not see it all clear before me, as I saw it in 
Australia. The Orient had cleared my eyes. 

Of course, my first thought was for the up- 
building of our house. I wanted it to take the 
leading part in the stupendous task, and to become 

172 



A VOYAGE TO CHINA 



the first house of the world. All this could have 
been accomplished, except that I had to contend 
against the conservatism of New England, and the 
very easily understood desire of Colonel Train 
that his house should directly own all its ships. 
This was, of course, impossible. He could not 
own them, but he might control them. I urged 
upon him the policy of retaining a controlling in- 
terest only, and letting others come in, bringing 
the capital we should need for the greater enter- 
prise. This was my idea of " combination,'^ of a 
great " shipping combine," more than half a cen- 
tury before it was undertaken, in another way, by 
Mr. Morgan and his associates. 

Colonel Train's persistent demand that he 
should own all the ships, put an end to the plan. 
It not only put an end to a grand project, but put 
an end to his business. He was soon confronted 
with difiQculties. The business had outgrown him 
and his limited means, had become unwieldy and 
unmanageable. As I had foreseen, it needed more 
men, more minds, more money; and these were 
not forthcoming. And so, in '57, Colonel Train 
was forced down, literally crushed beneath the 
weight of his own undertakings, as Tarpeia was 
crushed beneath the Sabine shields. He was the 
victim of his desire to own and dominate every- 
thing. 

Two years before this collapse of a great idea, 
I left Australia for Japan, by way of Java, Sin- 

173 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

gapore, and China, with high hopes. I had visions, 
which were to accompany me for a year or two 
more, and then I had to abandon them and turn 
my attention to other fields. From Melbourne, I 
sailed on the Dashing Wave. Has it ever occurred 
to any one who writes or thinks of the old days 
of sailing vessels, those winged ships, that the very 
names of boats have changed, indicating the trans- 
formation from romance to reality, from poetry to 
mere prose and work-a-day business! In those 
days we had beautiful and suggestive names for 
ships, just as we ought to try to find beautiful and 
suggestive names for all truly beautiful and lov- 
able things. Now we send out our City of Paris, 
or St. Louis, or St. Paul, or the Minneapolis, or 
the Astoria, or Kentucky, or Blaamanden, or Rot- 
terdam, or Ryndam, or Noordam. Then we had 
such names as Flying Cloud, the clipper that short- 
ened the distance between the ends of the world; 
the Sovereign of the Seas, the Monarch of the 
Ocean, the Flying Arrow, the Sea Eagle. The 
Dashing Wave, Captain Fiske, carried me to Ba- 
tavia in twenty-six days. We were accompanied, 
for a portion of the trip, by the Flying Arrow. 

At Anjer, in the Straits of Sunda, the Malays 
came off to the ship in their little boats with pro- 
visions of all sorts to sell. Every one of them 
had letters of recommendation, as they thought, 
from the English captains and officers who had 
previously traded with them; but these letters, if 

174 



A VOYAGE TO CHINA 



they could have been translated for their posses- 
sors, would have been instantly cast into the sea 
and a general riot perhaps would have followed. 
One of the letters read something like this : ^^ If 
this black thief brings any eggs to sell to you, 
don't buy them, as they are always rotten. He 
may also try to sell you a rooster, but don't buy it, 
as it is the same cock that crew when Peter denied 
Jesus." Of course everybody on the ship roared 
with laughter as each letter was handed up to us 
and read aloud for the edification of all. The sim- 
ple Malays guffawed loudly in their boats, think- 
ing that we were heartily pleased with them and 
their wares. When next I passed through the 
Sunda Straits, Krakatoa had been at work in erup- 
tion and had completely changed the face of the 
coast, and Anjer itself and the little island it stood 
on were gone. 

This Dutch colony was a revelation to me in 
every way. I had never seen anything at all like 
it in any other part of the world, and was never 
again to see anything quite so quaint or so delight- 
ful. The ride from Batavia to the hotel was full 
of surprises. I was accompanied by a troop of 
little children, all of them pressing close up to us 
and crying for " doits " — small copper coins. I 
scattered these little coins among them again and 
again, but they could never get enough, but kept 
on crying, "doit, doit!" Then the color of the 
trees, the rich shades of the flowers that flourished 

175 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

everywhere, the beauty of the scenery — all was a 
delightful surprise. I have never seen elsewhere 
so many or such rare flowers. The whole island 
of Java, as I was soon to learn, is a vast botanical 
garden, far more beautiful and rare than any that 
science can create. Nature, the great horticultu- 
rist, has here done her best and final work. The 
air, too, was delicious. It was perfumed by flow- 
ers, aromatic herbs, and spices. I had never real- 
ized before what was meant by the legends of the 
" Spice Islands," and I fancied that here was the 
place for man to live and die. 

I drove to the residence of the governor-gen- 
eral at Buitenzorg, thirty-five miles south of Ba- 
tavia, which was situated in a tremendous garden 
of flowers and trees. It was the most beautiful 
place I had ever seen, and I am quite sure that I 
have never seen anything more beautiful since. I 
was so delighted with Java, indeed, that I had a 
model of a Javanese village made for me, and 
shipped it home to my wife with the greatest care. 
What was my surprise, when I finally reached 
home, and asked eagerly if the model had been 
received, to be told that nothing had been seen of 
it. "Didn't something come from me from 
Java ? " Oh, yes, something had come, but it 
looked so big and uninteresting that it had been 
put down in the cellar. And there my beautiful 
model of the Javanese village had lain, in igno- 
miny, for years ! I restored it to its proper posi- 

176 



A VOYAGE TO CHINA 



tion in the world, by sending it to the Boston 
Museum. It was lost in the fire that soon after- 
ward destroyed that building. 

It was in Java that I first learned to love 
flowers, and I have loved them more and more 
every year of my life since. The natives of that 
wonderful island love to strew flowers over every- 
thing, and to garland everything with beautiful 
blossoms. I soon became infatuated with the cus- 
tom of carr^ang flowers, and adopted the bouton- 
niere, which I afterward introduced in Paris in 
'56, in London in '57, and in New York in '58. 
I have endeavored to wear a spray of flowers in 
the lapel of my coat every day since my visit to 
Java. 

There was one particularly pleasing custom, 
which I think should have been long ago introduced 
in this country. This was the fashion of bringing 
in fruit to the table covered with flowers. It is a 
custom that delights three senses at once — the 
smell, the sight, the taste. The first time I saw it 
was at the table of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, when he 
gave a dinner to me and my friends. After we 
had finished eating, I was asked if I did not wish 
for some of the fruit. I looked around and could 
not see fruit an^^-here. In front of me were great 
masses of flowers in baskets, and I could readily 
detect the odor of fruits of various kinds, but they 
were invisible. I had almost decided that they 
were outside in the garden, and that possibly 

177 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

we were expected to pluck them from the trees, 
which, heavily laden with their burdens, hung 
temptingly against the windows. But no, the fruit 
was immediately before me, hidden beneath masses 
of cut flowers, in trays and baskets. I thought it a 
beautiful custom, and one that distinctly appeals 
to esthetic taste. It could well be introduced at 
Newport or Saratoga, or in Fifth Avenue man- 
sions. 

I regretted that Great Britain had lost, through 
a piece of carelessness, these magnificent islands 
now controlled by Holland; although the Dutch 
have done about as well as any other people could 
have done, I suppose. I believe it was because 
Lord Canning did not open his eastern mail one 
morning, that these islands became a possession 
of Holland instead of Great Britain. 

I did not, on the occasion of my first visit, see 
anything of the Achinese. But I passed, in '92, 
on my last trip around the world, the northwestern 
end of Sumatra, and Captain Hogg, of the Moy- 
une, pointed to the little town of Achin, built on 
piles. He said that in the interior the Dutch were 
still fighting the Achinese. They had then been 
fighting these desperate Mohammedans — convert- 
ed Malays — for thirty years. I have since thought, 
having in view this prolonged struggle for free- 
dom of the Mohammedan Malays of Sumatra, how 
desperate is our undertaking in the Philippines, 
where we are trying to subjugate a far larger 

178 



A VOYAGE TO CHINA 



population of Mohammedans, the Moros of 
the southern islands of the archipelago. Hol- 
land, I believe, has spent already something 
like 500,000,000 florins to exterminate the Achi- 
nese. It may cost us far more to exterminate the 
Moros. 

I left Batavia for Singapore on a Dutch man- 
of-war. Captain Fabius. We stopped first at the 
island of Banka, belonging to Holland, and I saw 
there the famous tin-mines, which are greater than 
those of Cornwall, England. They were the prop- 
erty of the brother of the King of Holland. We 
did not stop at Sarawak, because of the little war 
that " Rajah " Brooke, afterward known as Sara- 
wak Brooke, was carrying on there. We arrived 
at Singapore just too late to meet Townsend 
Harris, the first American diplomatic repre- 
sentative to Japan, as he had gone up to Siam. 
Harrises visit to Japan was the real beginning 
of a new era in the trade of the far East, and 
no other diplomatic mission in the history of 
this country has been fraught with greater re- 
sults. 

Singapore was then a port of much dirtiness 
and much business. All the vessels of the world 
came there, and the greatest variety of cargoes 
that I have ever seen. The most interesting thing 
I saw there was the magnificent home of a great 
Chinese millionaire, who managed the largest 
business in Singapore, or, indeed, in that part of 

179 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the world. He had a splendid palace, surrounded 
by beautiful and extensive gardens, the whole be- 
ing worthy of a king or emperor. Here he lived 
in the style of some barbaric prince. This China- 
man had established in Singapore the kind of store 
which we in America think we invented — the de- 
partment store. But I learned afterward when I 
went to China, that the department store is com- 
mon there, and had been known for hundreds, per- 
haps thousands, of years. This development of 
the store is as old as the civilization of the Cau- 
casian race, and, perhaps, was known to China 
ages before America was discovered. I had the 
pleasure of receiving an invitation to visit the 
Chinaman in his palace, and was astounded by the 
extensive grandeur of everything. He had a pas- 
sion for animals, and owned two tigers in cages 
that were the largest animals of their kind I have 
ever seen. 

From Singapore, I sailed for China on a P. & 
O. steamer. On board I met Dr. Parker, the new 
American minister to China, and my roommate 
was Alexander Collie, of Manchester, England, 
who, during our civil war, became the chief Eng- 
lish blockade runner. I may as well dispose of 
my experiences with Collie while I have him be- 
fore me. Collie operated his blockade-running 
business through the London and Westminster 
(Limited) Bank. When I was in England I dis- 
covered the nature of his work, and exposed him 

180 



A VOYAGE TO CHINA 



through correspondence in the New York Herald. 
This led to the breaking down of his enterprise, 
and to the bank's loss of £500,000 sterling. Collie 
escaped arrest by fleeing to Spain, I have never 
heard of him since. 



181 



CHAPTER XIV 

IN CHINESE CITIES 
1855-1856 

At Hongkong I went to our correspondents, 
iWilliams, Anthon & Co., and took passage in En- 
dieott^s little steamer, the Spark, for Macao, the 
Portuguese port of China. Before leaving Hong- 
kong, however, as I had some little time on my 
hands, I determined to see everything that was to 
be seen there. I had the remarkable experience 
of meeting the man who was afterward the hus- 
band of Hetty Green. This was E. H. Green, who 
was married twelve years later. He was then con- 
nected with the house of Russell & Sturgis, our 
correspondents in Manila, and he joined me for 
the trip to Macao and Canton. After a short 
stay in Hongkong, we went on to Macao and 
Canton. 

We had, on this voyage, the common experi- 
ences of Chinese waters — pirates and typhoons. 
At the Boca Tigris, the mouth of the Canton, or 
Pearl, river, we were overtaken by the typhoon, 
and we had to anchor near an island in the midst 

182 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



of a number of junks. These soon proved to be 
pirate ships, and we were, apparently, in great 
danger. The pirates immediately began to draw 
up about us, as if meditating an attack. The little 
Spark would, of course, stand no chance in such a 
contest. I did not think she could last ten min- 
utes in a fight with those ugly junks. 

The Chinese anchored their boats up close to 
the Spark, and I noticed that a dozen of the ugli- 
est ruffians our own sailors had ever encountered 
were staring in through the cabin windows. I 
could not imagine what they were looking at, and 
went forward to see what was wrong. There was 
Mr. Green, sitting facing the window, his feet on 
the table, and making faces at the crew. He was 
the coolest man, I think, that I ever saw. Noth- 
ing moved him out of his imperturbable calm. 
The Chinamen were scowling at him, but this did 
not at all disconcert him. If he was going to be 
killed by these devils, he seemed to be thinking, 
he might as well die in a cheerful humor. How 
could he know they were not pirates in disguise! 

The pirates expected that we should fall an 
easy prey into their hands, as our coal had given 
out, and there was no assistance within reach. We 
were in a dilemma, but we attacked the woodwork 
of the deck, and got enough to fire up the engines 
and get a head of steam, when suddenly, to the 
amazement of the pirates, we steamed out and 
away. The storm having subsided, the junks 

183 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

were soon left far behind and we reached Macao 
safely. 

Macao was at that time the headquarters of 
the new slave trade. I went to the top of a high 
hill for the purpose of looking at the barracoons, 
where slaves were kept. The barracoon is, in 
meaning, a little barrack, but it is, in reality, a 
pest-hole. Here were gathered the Chinese who 
were to be sent as victims and slaves to the Peru- 
vian islands. The practise was to bring China- 
men from the interior by telling them of the great 
riches their countrymen had found in America, 
which was then a name that tempted all Chinamen 
of the coast regions. Many Chinamen, it was 
known, had gone to America and done well, and 
the wretches that the slave-dealers wanted to ship 
to Peru were told that they would be sent to Amer- 
ica. They thought they were going to California ; 
but they were shipped to the Chincha islands, near 
Callao, the port of Lima, Peru. 

As Boston was then deeply interested in the 
subject of slavery in the Southern States, I wrote 
a description of this new slavery in the Chincha 
islands, giving the names of the boats that had 
recently sailed from Macao with full cargoes of 
slaves. I had heard of this horrible traffic in hu- 
man flesh at Singapore, but could not believe it, 
until I actually saw it at Macao. Whenever the 
wretches mutinied, or grew restive, they were put 
down in the hold and the hatches closed. The hor- 

184 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



rors of such a position were as great as those of 
the infamous " Middle Passage," made so con- 
spicuous by the abolitionists in the campaign 
against African slavery. Chinamen perished by 
hundreds, and many of the survivors were 
maimed or invalided for life. In a single case, 
some two hundred victims were smothered and 
died in the hold of one of these slavers. My let- 
ters to the New York Herald were copied far 
and near. It was discovered that some of the Bos- 
ton people themselves were interested in enslav- 
ing the Chinese. But the practise could not stand 
the light of exposure, and so was broken up. 

We hurried on from Macao to Canton, arriving 
there during the Chinese New Year. This city 
astonished me in a number of ways. It was dirty 
and miserable beyond imagination, with narrow 
streets and indescribable filth. But that it carried 
on a tremendous volume of trade was apparent 
from a glance. The river was covered with junks 
and larger vessels at Whampoa, the lower port, 
floating the flags of every nation. Warehouses, 
the " godowns " of the foreign traders, revealed 
the existence of an enormous, and profitable 
commerce. The word " godown," which many 
take to be a " pidgin-English " word composed of 
^^ go " and " down," and signifying putting things 
down in a warehouse, is a Malay word, and comes 
from ^' gadang," meaning a place for storing arti- 
cles away. The warehouses were surrounded by 

185 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

high walls, in the manner of private villas and 
town residences of the Chinese, and were adorned 
by beautiful gardens. 

There was a pretty custom, among foreign resi- 
dents, to invite all visitors to dine with them. 
These invitations were sent informally upon little 
cards called "chits." As I was already known 
in the business world there, I received a great 
many of these invitations. I was walking with Mr. 
Green one day, when he said it was getting time 
to think about dinner. " Where will you dine ? '' 
he asked. I replied that I did not know which in- 
vitation to accept. I thought that I would take 
some of his conceit out of him, by showing him 
that I had received a great number of " chits," and 
I drew a package of them from my pocket. I re- 
marked coolly that I could not make up my mind 
what to do, as I had an emharras de richesses, I 
counted the " chits," and there were eleven. Green, 
with great nonchalance, drew out his package of 
" chits " ; he had thirteen ! 

He had a great way of taking care of himself 
in such circumstances. He suggested that there 
was only one thing to do — to find out who, among 
our intending hosts, would have the best dinner. 
He then took me around to the rear of the resi- 
dences, where a high wall separated the gardens 
from the native city, and where I discovered that 
the Chinese cooks always hung up the game, poul- 
try, and other things they were preparing for 

186 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



meals. From this array we could tell what every- 
body was going to have for dinner. After a stroll 
through the alley, we selected the house that had 
displayed behind it some lovely pheasants and 
salmon. " The owner of that house shall have the 
honor of being our host," said Green. I approved 
his choice both then and after the dinner, which 
was an excellent one, at which the golden pheas- 
ants were the pidce de resistance, I soon discov- 
ered for myself, what I had long heard, that the 
Chinese are the best cooks in the world. 

Another thing I learned about the Chinaman 
was that he is the most honest tradesman in the 
world, and the most careful about debts. The 
Chinese New Year is the season when the China- 
man wipes off the slate and begins life over again, 
with a clean record. He pays up all debts, and 
starts even with the world. I learned that on this 
anniversary the Chinaman will sell everything he 
possesses, even his liberty, his person, his life it- 
self, to settle his debts, so that he may face the 
new year with a clean conscience and a pure heart, 
as well as with no bills hanging over him. 

As this was practically the first Chinese city 
I had seen, I was very curious about it. It was 
all new ground to me, and I was eager to explore 
it. I knew that this was not permitted, for six 
Englishmen had been killed shortly before my ar- 
rival, for daring to venture inside the walls of the 
Chinese city, which was then as much forbidden 
■14 187 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

ground as the " Pink City " of Pekin. The fate of 
the Englishmen only made me more keen to get 
inside the walls. I thought I could take care of 
myself sufficiently well. I was warned by friends 
not to risk the thing, but I took all the respon- 
sibility, and went inside, while the gates were 
open. I had not gone more than a few rods when 
I heard behind me and all around me the wildest 
cries. Men ran toward me with shouts of " Fan- 
kwai" — foreign devil; and I saw at once that I 
had stirred up a hornet's nest. I looked about 
me, and discovered that the gate I had come 
through was still open. There was a pretty fair 
chance, by running fast, for getting through it be- 
fore the Chinamen could head me off. This calcu- 
lation took about one-millionth of a second, and I 
plunged for the gate, " like a pawing horse let go." 
If the stop-watch could have been held on me, I am 
sure I should have established a record for a 
short-distance sprint. 

The next time I visited Canton was in '70. 
The gates were open, and the walls were of no 
avail to keep the foreign devils out. The Amer- 
ican merchant Nye, who was familiarly known as 
the Napoleon of China, because of his gigantic en- 
terprises, took me over the city. I had read and 
heard about Chinamen eating rats, but this was 
the only time I ever saw the thing done, and I 
could hardly believe my eyes. A Chinaman came 
up to Mr. Nye and me in the street, and offered 

188 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



to sell us a rat, a big fellow still alive. I asked 
if it was to be eaten, and the Chinaman said it 
was. " But it is not cooked," I objected. " I am 
not going to begin on live rats." The Chinaman 
said he would prepare it — the rat cooked and 
served to cost me two cents. I told him to go 
ahead. To my surprise he took a little stove from 
under his arm, lighted a fire, and in a few minutes 
had the rodent roasted to a crisp. I was aston- 
ished — and ashamed — to see how nice it looked. 
It did appear toothsome. I said to the Chinaman, 
** Now, you can eat it." He did, and with great 
gusto and smacking of the lips. So he got his rat 
and my two cents, also. 

But I ascertained that there is about as much 
truth in the common stories in our silly juvenile 
literature about Chinamen generally eating rats 
as there is in stories of other marvelous things in 
far-off lands. I also found that there is no deadly 
upas-tree in Java, which was a distinct shock to 
me. I had been reared, so to speak, in the fatal 
shade of that upas. I had watched birds drop 
dead as they tried to fly across its swath of malig- 
nant shadow; I had seen animals stricken by its 
fatal exudations and writhing in agony. I saw all 
these things in the old New England farmhouse, 
which was the headquarters of the Methodists; 
but in Java, they had all disappeared. There 
was no upas-tree, and the mortality among birds 
and animals was no greater than necessary to sat- 

189 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

isfy the predatory natures of other animals, birds, 
and men. And now to find in China that the New 
England stories about general rat-eating were 
false, was another shock. 

But the Chinese are not as cleanly as they 
might be. I learned this interesting fact in con- 
nection with my taste for Canton ginger. I had 
always, from earliest childhood, been outrageous- 
ly fond of this delicate comfit. I had eaten it in 
great quantities whenever I got the chance; and 
when I arrived in Canton, the home of this con- 
serve, I at once thought of it, and wanted to know 
more about its manufacture. I learned, after 
some inquiry, that it was put up at a factory on 
the island of Ho-nan, near Canton. Ho-nan is also 
the name of a famous Buddhist temple on the 
same island. The factory, as well as most of the 
so-called island, is built on piles. I had not al- 
together overlooked this fact when I asked the 
factory people where they got the water for the 
sirup of the preserves. They looked at me as if 
I were demented. " Water ! why we are right over 
the river ! " Yes, they were right over the river, 
the dirtiest and most villainous river in the world. 
The sewage of the dirtiest city in China — which is 
saying about all that can be said on the subject — 
is emptied into this river. I need not say that I 
did not eat any of the Canton ginger then, and I 
have not eaten any of it since. 

I have set down my views as to the topsy-tur- 
190 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



viness of things in Australia. I found China top- 
sy-turvy in a different way. The Chinese begin 
their books and letters where we end ours, at what 
we should call the back. They read from right to 
left, instead of from left to right, and, strangest 
of all, the men wear gowns, and the women — don't ! 
When I was introduced to How-kwa, a warm 
friend of the Russells, I advanced to shake hands 
with him, but he stepped back and solemnly shook 
hands with himself for me. Then he waved his 
hands toward the door, as if to say, so it seemed 
to me, " get out of here," and I was amazed, but 
Sturgis informed me that the great Chinaman 
was merely beckoning to me to come nearer to him. 
I went up to him, by that time so impressed with 
the Chinese way of doing things backward that if 
he had kicked at me, I should have thought he was 
asking me to embrace him. We were in How-kwa's 
residence, which was surrounded by the most ex- 
quisite gardens, and were invited to partake of a 
cup of tea. For the first time in my life I drank 
tea that cost $30 a pound. We used no sugar nor 
milk, of course, as these things are considered in 
China to spoil good tea. The next best tea I have 
drunk, I think, was the tea I got at the fair of 
Nijnii Novgorod, Russia, in '57, which had been 
brought overland thousands of miles across moun- 
tains and deserts, packed in little bricks. 

Again, I found that the Chinese look backward, 
and not forward, and ennoble their ancestors, 

191 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

instead of their offspring, and pay little at- 
tention to the coming generation. They say that 
they know what their ancestors — the dead — were, 
but can not foretell what the living may become. 
They scull their boats in the rivers from the bow, 
instead of from the stern. Their boatmen are 
usually women. While we fear the water, and 
seek to make our dwelling places upon the rock or 
upon very dry land, the Chinaman will get as near 
as possible to the water. In the Canton, or Pearl, 
river there were, when I was there, some 100,000 
persons living on the river, in boats, or on floats, 
or rafts. A Westerner would suppose children 
were in danger of falling into the water. They 
do fall in, but their mothers have devised a method 
of rescuing them without mischance. Cords are 
fastened to their bodies, and when a child falls 
overboard, the cord, which is made fast to the boat, 
prevents it from sinldng too far before the mother 
or father catches hold and pulls it back into the 
boat. 

They call all servants, male and female, 
"boy," which reminds me that in the European- 
ized parts of some of the Japanese cities they do 
the same, and wh^n they want to specify definitely 
that the " boy " is a girl, they say " onna no boy," 
which means " girl-boy," or girl servant. This is, 
of course, pidgin-English, the business English of 
the Chinese littoral. I had an amusing experience 
with this pidgin-English. I had invited some 

192 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



friends to dine with me, a merchant and his two 
sons and three daughters, and when I asked the 
servant who had come, he said that the merchant 
had arrived and " two bull chilo, and three cow 
chilo." 

Pidgin-English amused me very much, as it 
amuses every one who visits China. Augustine 
Heard, the merchant, who was a master of this 
lingo, used to interest me by reciting phrases 
from it, and once gave me the following poem, 
which is a translation of Longfellow^s Excelsior. 
The translation was made by Mr. Heard. It has 
been published throughout the world as an 
" anonymous " production : 

THE CHINESE EXCELSIOR 

That nightee teem he come chop-chop 
One young man walkee, no can stop; 
Maskee snow, maskee ice; 
He cally flag with chop so nice — 
Top-side Galahl 

He muchee solly; one piecee eye 
Lookee sharp — so fashion — my; 
He talkee large, he talkee stlong, 
Too muchee cullo; alle same gong. 
Top-side Galahl 



Insidee house he can see light. 
And evly loom got fire all light, 
He lookee plenty ice more high, 
Insidee mout'h he plenty cly — 
Top-side Galahl 

Ole man talkee, **No can walk, 
*'Bimeby lain come, velly dark; 

193 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

**Have got water, velly widel" 
Maskee, my must go top-side — 
Top-side Galah! 

*' Man-man," one girlee talkee he, 
'' Wliat for you go top-side look— see?" 
And one teem more he plenty cly, 
But alle teem walk plenty high — 
Top-side Galah I 

**Take care t'hat spilimi tlee, young man, 
*'Take care t'hat ice, must go man-man." 
One coolie chin-chin he good night. 
He talkee, "My can go all light" — 
Top-side Galah I 

T'hat young man die; one large dog, see, 
Too muchee bobbly findee he. 
He hand b'long coldee, all same like ice, 
He holdee flag wit'h chop so nice — 
Top-side Galah! 

When I was ready to start for Japan, I had 
made up my mind to visit Shanghai on the way, 
and was about to start, when Canton merchants, 
native and foreign, tried to dissuade me. They 
told me it would be terribly disappointing, and 
that I would regret wasting any time there. They 
did not know my nature, and that this sort of 
thing merely stimulated my curiosity and hard- 
ened my determination. 

I took passage in the P. & 0. boat, the Erin, 
Captain Jameson, and supposed, of course, that I 
should have a stateroom. But I was to meet with 
another Chinese surprise. A great Chinese man- 
darin, going from Hongkong to Shanghai, had en- 

194 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



gaged the whole cabin. I was very desirous to see 
this great personage, and soon had the opportu- 
nity. It is my practise, when at sea, to take exer- 
cise by walking rapidly up and down the deck, 
thus covering many miles a day. I was taking my 
daily exercise the day when the mandarin came on 
board ship, and every time I passed the cabin I no- 
ticed that he followed me with his eyes. And so 
we kept it up for some time, I walking as uncon- 
cernedly as I could, and the great mandarin watch- 
ing my movements as curiously as if I were some 
strange animal. 

After a while he called the first officer, and 
asked what I was doing. " AValking up and down 
the deck," he was told. "But why does he do it? 
Is he paid for it?" The officer told him it was 
for exercise. " What is that! " asked the Chinese 
great man. This was explained to him, but he 
could not understand why any one wanted to walk 
up and down, and do so much unnecessary work. 
The Chinese are not averse to work; indeed, they 
are one of the most industrious people on the face 
of the earth, but they do not do unnecessary work, 
having, I infer, to do as much necessary work as is 
good for them. And this great dignitary pointed 
to me with scorn and said : " Number one f oolo." 
I hardly need explain that " number one," through- 
out the far East, means the superlative degree. 

This mandarin was the great Li Hung Chang, 
who had been summoned by his emperor to save 

195 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the country from the terrible Tai-ping rebellion. 
He was on his way from Canton to Shanghai. He 
there called in the splendid services of three great 
foreigners — the Frenchman, Bougevine, the Amer- 
ican, Ward, and the Englishman, " Chinese " Gor- 
don ; but it was largely and chiefly due to the stub- 
bornness and genius of Li that the empire was 
saved to the Manchus, at a cost, it is estimated, of 
twenty millions of lives. 

When we reached Woosung there were six 
armed opium ships for cargoes of opium from 
Calcutta and Bombay, which the English were 
forcing upon the Chinese, much as we should force 
rum on the Mexicans, and make them pay for it. 
The English and Americans were reaping fortunes 
in the most unlioly traffic the world has seen — and 
it will never be forgotten in China, or anywhere 
else, that England went to war with China to force 
China to permit the shipment of opium into that 
country to ruin millions of lives and impoverish 
millions of families. I feel heartily ashamed of 
myself for having once smuggled a little of this 
horrible drug into China. But I found that many 
Americans and Englishmen were devoting them- 
selves to the trade as a regular business. 

In Shanghai I was the guest of Russell & Co., 
who were then represented by Cunningham and G. 
Griswold Gray. The fighting in the great rebel- 
lion was still raging — it was not put down until 
after Gordon recaptured Nanking — and when I 

196 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



was in Shanghai the Chinese authorities kept the 
gory heads of rebels hanging from the walls as 
an example to all who contemplated opposing the 
Manchu rule. These hideous trophies of the war 
were the most impressive things that I saw in 
Shanghai. 

Dr. Lockhart, the missionary, acted voluntarily 
as my dragoman and guide in Shanghai, and 
showed me things in the city that I could never 
have discovered for myself. In one of the squares 
I noticed a monument 150 feet high, which, I was 
told by Lockhart, had been built by the poor peo- 
ple of China in commemoration of an old lady, 
who had been the Helen Gould of her day. Each 
of the subscribers had contributed cash equal to 
one tenth of a cent. 

Some really splendid virtues of the Chinese 
impressed me deeply. I liked and admired them 
the more I saw them. I have already said that 
they are the most honest people on the globe. It 
seems to me an extraordinary thing that this race, 
the world's highest type of honesty, should be the 
only race to which we are inhospitable. The Chi- 
nese were far ahead of Europeans in many ways for 
centuries. If they have fallen behind now, it may 
be only because Europeans are rushing hastily 
through their brief civilizations, while China, hav- 
ing enjoyed hers for ages, is content to watch us 
rise, flourish, and decay, as we watch the passing 
generations of the forest and the field. 

197 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

They invented and used the things that we re- 
gard as almost the highest products of our civili- 
zation. They had used the mariner's compass for 
centuries before we had it ; they invented printing 
perhaps a thousand years before Gutenberg ; they 
invented gunpowder, which they had used in war 
and every-day life; they had the best paper ever 
seen long before the rest of the world had any, 
and the outside nations have not yet been able to 
duplicate theirs ; they invented the newspaper, and 
have the oldest journal in the world, the Peldn 
Gazette; they discovered the Golden Eule, unless 
that honor belongs to the Greek, Thales ; they de- 
veloped philosophy — the highest system of the 
world, in Confucianism — before the Greeks, and, 
of course, long before the Germans ; and they were 
the first people of the world to appreciate educa- 
tion. 

Moreover, as Mr. Wu, the great Chinese min- 
ister at "Washington, has so often pointed out, they 
were democratic long before Thomas Jefferson, 
and long before the Greeks had invented the word 
" democracy," or had discovered the idea of a 
democratic state or city. I had been taught that 
the hard-headed and practical Scotch had invented 
the macadam road, naming it from a canny Scot 
of that name ; but I found a macadamized road in 
China three or four thousand years old, and long 
enough to wrap around the British Isles. The 
Chinese have long preceded us, and they may long 

198 



IN CPIINESE CITIES 



survive us, nullifying all the " imperialism " and 
" expansionism '^ of Europe and America, which 
would cut her into fragments as the spoil of the 
world. 

While I was in China, on this first visit, and 
on the several occasions of my later visits, I gave 
much thought to the vast population of that coun- 
try. I have come to the conclusion that the popu- 
lation is less than half, probably less than one- 
third, of what it is generally estimated to be. I 
notice that the Chinese viceroys have recently 
made an estimate of their respective provinces, 
at the command of the emperor, and that the total 
reaches the enormous figure of 425,000,000. I do 
not believe that there are 200,000,000 people in 
the entire empire, and I should prefer estimating 
the population at something between 150,000,000 
and 175,000,000. 

I found that China is not a densely populated 
country, as is generally supposed. The seashore 
is fairly crowded, and the impression one gets 
from seeing the surface of the water covered at 
Canton with rafts and floats on which more than 
100,000 persons live, is that the inhabitants must 
swarm in the same degree over the face of the 
land. This is not the case. Even the coast is 
merely fringed with people. Back in the interior 
there are no such dense masses of population. All 
accounts that I can read of the interior, from 
Father Hue down to Mr. Parsons of New York, 

199 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

bear me out in this. I can not see where there are 
more than 175,000,000, or 150,000,000, people in 
that empire. The reports of the slaughter in the 
Tai-ping rebellion, of some 20,000,000 people, 
would seem to indicate a population of at least 
200,000,000 or 250,000,000; but these figures were 
greatly exaggerated, as all such things are in 
China. All statistics are nothing but guesswork, 
and the bigger they are the better people like them. 

I engaged passage in the Greta, which was to 
go to Shimoda and Hakodate, Japan. My objec- 
tive point was Yokohama, where it was my pur- 
pose to establish a branch of the house of Train 
& Co., Melbourne. My Australian house was not 
connected with Colonel Train's Boston and Liver- 
pool packet firm. At this time, however, the Eng- 
lish and Eussians, who were not as good friends 
then as they are now, were fighting, and the little 
war completely upset all of my plans. I could 
not get to Yokohama at all, and did not visit Japan 
until several years later. I had, therefore, to give 
up my passage in the Greta, and turn my face from 
Japan. Just at this point, Augustine Heard in- 
vited G. Griswold Gray, of Russell & Co., and me 
to go to Fu-chow, on one of his sailing ships, the 
John Wade. 

This trip I very willingly made, as I wanted 
to see everything of China that was possible ; but 
it was more adventurous than I had expected. As 
we were sailing down the China coast, a typhoon 

200 




Cicnrgf l-'i;iii(i> Tiaiii d id at i !!<::; liis uutitbiogiajiliy in his i-ooin in 
the Mills Hotel. 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



struck us, and over went sails and masts. Our 
pilot from Shanghai was immediately in difficul- 
ties, as the pilot from Fu-chow, whom we had just 
picked up, did not understand the pilot we had 
brought from Shanghai. I had the utmost diffi- 
culty, owing to my inadequate mastery of pidgin- 
English, in establishing communication between 
these essential elements of our little crew. We 
had, finally, to get into a boat and make our way 
up the River Min for forty miles in the dark. It 
was a very trying experience, as the river was ab- 
solutely unknown to me ; the darkness was " un- 
pierceable by power of any star," and the river 
was treacherous in itself for small boats. To 
make matters worse, it was infested by junlc 
pirates. This latter danger I had got some- 
what accustomed to, as almost every inch of 
Chinese water was, in those days, the field of 
operations for these pirates. The other nations 
of the world had not yet adopted effective means 
for getting rid of them as the United States got 
rid of the Algerian and Tripolitan plunderers. 

We arrived at Fu-chow, after a harassing 
night on the river. Almost the first thing to greet 
my curious eyes, as they were sweeping the hori- 
zon for wonders in that land of wonders, was the 
old suspension bridge, which the Chinese assert 
was built in the fourteenth century. It proved to 
be as much of a curiosity as the Chinese wall in the 
north. At Fu-chow I was a guest in the house of 

201 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the Russells. Immediately upon landing, Gray, 
Heard, and myself took sedan chairs for a tour 
through the city. 

On this occasion I had my first opportunity to 
appeal to the American flag for protection. As 
we were passing through a very narrow, but im- 
portant street, our coolies were suddenly set upon 
and overturned. We scrambled out of the chairs, 
and asked what was the matter. We learned that 
the viceroy was also passing through the thorough- 
fare, and that everything and everybody had to 
give way for his retinue. My companions at once 
stepped out of the way, but my blood was up. I 
resented being upset in the street, like so much 
refuse, in order to have the filthy thoroughfare 
cleared for the passage of a mere Chinese viceroy. 

I had a small American flag in my pocket, care- 
fully wrapped about its little staff, and I took it 
out with a great deal of display and waved the 
tiny emblem around my head. I dared the 
Chinese servants of the viceroy to touch me or to 
interfere with my right to pass through the streets 
of Fu-chow. This had its effect. I noticed at once 
that the Chinese in the street, who recognized the 
colors of the United States, fell back from me, 
our coolies got up out of the dirt, and once more 
took hold of the poles of the chairs. The viceroy 
passed on, pretending not to have noticed the inci- 
dent, and in a few minutes the way was clear 
again. 

202 



IN CHINESE CITIES 



Fu-chow was the black-tea port of China at 
that time, and it had been opened just two years 
before. It was astonishing at what a rapid pace 
business of a certain kind swung along in the 
coast cities of the Far East. In two years several 
of the Canton houses, representatives of the 
great shipping and other business concerns of the 
world, had opened branch offices in Fu-chow. 
Commercial life there was intensely active and 
very prosperous. 

From Fu-chow I went on down the coast to 
Hongkong, this being my second visit there. I 
noticed at Swatow several ships loaded with Chi- 
nese slaves destined for the Chincha guano islands 
of Peru. My destination was Calcutta, so we did 
not have much time to explore the Chinese coast, 
much as I should have liked to do so. 



15 203 



CHAPTEE Xy 

TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 

1856 

, I SAILED from Hongkong on Jardine's opium 
steamer, Fiery Cross. As the course we took had 
been gone over by me in the voyage to Hongkong 
from Singapore, I was not especially interested in 
it until we had passed the Straits and got into 
Indian waters. The Andaman Islands, where 
dwells one of the lowest races of mankind, in- 
terested me greatly. We saw only a little of these 
curious people, the Veddahs, but I learned of a 
very interesting custom followed by the widows of 
the islands to commemorate their deceased hus- 
bands. This consists in wearing the skull of the 
dead man on the shoulder as a sort of ornament 
and memento. It is considered a delicate way of 
perpetuating the memory of the husband. 

I had a letter of introduction from Eobert 
Sturgis to George Ashburner, at Calcutta, and the 
moment I arrived Mr. Ashburner insisted upon 
my becoming his guest. I spent three days with 
him, and have never partaken of such luxurious 

204 



TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 

hospitality elsewhere. It is only man in the Ori- 
ent who knows how to live fast and furious and 
get every enjoyment out of his little span of life. 
I was surrounded by a retinue of servants, who 
stood ready to answer every beck and call. Serv- 
ice in India being highly specialized, there was a 
servant for everything. I had a little army of 
fourteen serving men, four of whom carried my 
chair, or palanquin, with a relay, a man to serve 
me specially at table, a punka man, and a man for 
every other detail of living. 

There was something to do and to see every 
moment of the time. I was taken to all the 
show-places of the city. The first sight shown to 
me was the famous Black Hole, where John Z. 
Holwell and one hundred and forty-six men were 
incarcerated in a dungeon twelve feet square. One 
can not escape being told the horrible story, if he 
visits Calcutta, and I suppose that every one hears 
the narrative with added adornment, after the 
true Hindu style. The special point of the story 
that was thrust at me was the orgy and heavy 
sleep of the rajah, while his servitors were try- 
ing to arouse him to answer the screams of the 
dying men in the Hole. In the morning, after 
the rajah had had his beauty sleep, he was told 
of the little difficulty the English had in breath- 
ing in the foul and heavy air of the dungeon, 
and he ordered them released; but death, linger- 
ing, and as heavy-handed and heavy-hearted as 

205 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



the brutal prince, had already released most of 
them. 

One is glad to be told for the ten thousandth 
time, after hearing this ghastly tale, of the clei'k 
Clive leaving his ledgers and pens and leading an 
army to crush the wretches at Plassy. But, like 
most things of the kind, the horrors of the Black 
Hole have been exaggerated, until sympathy, 
palled, refuses longer to be torn and bled over im- 
aginary as well as real terrors. There have been 
many worse catastrophes, and of a nature that 
should appeal more strongly to the heart. Men, 
women, and children have gone down in flood and 
pestilence, free from any stain of wrong, which can 
not be said of the victims of the Black Hole. We 
can not forget altogether that they were in India 
not of right, but as conquerors, and that they were 
originally, at least, in the wrong. But the suffer- 
ers in the Johnstown flood, the thousands who 
died in the Lisbon, Krakatoa, and Martinique dis- 
asters, and other thousands that go down in ships 
at sea — these innocent victims demand sympathy 
much more. 

It seemed that most of my sight-seeing in Cal- 
cutta was to be limited to horrible things. In- 
deed, the visitor is often hurried from horror to 
horror, as if he were in some " chamber of hor- 
rors " in a museum. I was taken to the burning 
ghaut, where dead bodies are cremated. I saw 
some five hundred little fires, which were so many 

206 



TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 

pyres for the dead. I had heard much of the 
burning of live women in order that they should 
accompany their dead masters, and out of sheer 
curiosity asked the guard if there were men only 
in the fires. For answer, he took a long hook, 
thrust it into one of the fires, pulled it back and 
on its prongs brought the charred leg of a man. 
Immediately birds of prey (adjutants) pounced 
down upon the smoking flesh and bore it away. 
These birds are the scavengers of Calcutta, and 
the special guardians of the ghaut. Cremation is 
a great economy in India. It costs only half a cent 
to burn a body. 

Another horror shall complete this gruesome 
part of my story. Being very fond of shrimps, 
one day I inquired, in a moment of forgetful- 
ness — for it is a safe rule not to ask the source of 
anything in the East — where and how they got 
these shrimps. I was taken to the fishing 
grounds in the mouth of the river, and there saw 
millions of these prawns flocking, like petty scav- 
engers, about the dead bodies that continually float 
down the Ganges. Human flesh was their favor- 
ite food. This was enough for me. I stopped 
eating shrimps in India, as I had stopped eating 
Canton ginger preserves in China. 

On the second day of my stay in Calcutta I re- 
ceived cards to the reception given by Lord Dal- 
housie to Lord Canning, the new Governor-Gen- 
eral. Lord Dalhousie, the retiring Governor- 

207 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

General, was dying. In fact lie had been dying 
for montlis. I shall not go into any description 
of the exceedingly brilliant reception. It made 
an ineffaceable impression upon me because of 
the grouping on that occasion of some of the most 
splendid of the British administrators and of some 
of the most daring of their enemies, who were 
even then plotting revolution and bloodshed. I 
was introduced to both the passing and the coming 
Governor-General and to General Havelock, after- 
wards the gallant fighter at Lucknow. I had the 
rare privilege of seeing these three men talking 
amicably with the great Nana Sahib, the leader of 
the Hindus at Cawnpore. 

The voyage from Calcutta to Suez was al- 
most devoid of incident. We put into Madras, a 
barren, flat, and dismal place, to take on passen- 
gers, and then sailed for Point de Galle, Ceylon. 
At this place I saw, for the first time, elephants 
employed in carrying and piling heavy timbers. 
They go about their task with an intelligence that 
is nearly human, lifting heavy teak timbers and 
placing them in regular order in great piles. I 
had not before supposed that any animals pos- 
sessed so much sense. 

Coming down to Aden, two thousand miles 
from Galle, sleeping with the bulkhead open op- 
posite my berth, one night I felt something slap 
me in the face. As I was all alone, I did not know 
what to make of it. There was no light, and I could 

208 



TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 

not see. As soon as I fell asleep another slap came. 
I had heard about the insects of the tropics, but 
had no idea they were of such size as to cause 
these slaps. In the morning, I found out what 
had been the matter. Nine flying-fish lay dead in 
my berth. 

At Aden, the most barren and gloomy place I 
have ever seen, we went out to the cantonments, 
which must have been built thousands of years 
ago. We hurried up the Red Sea to Suez, and 
then crossed over by land from Suez, eighty-four 
miles, to Cairo, with six hundred camels in the 
caravan. We had coaches carrying six passen- 
gers. I have a good idea of what the Sahara 
Desert is from having seen this desert between 
Suez and Cairo. Just before we reached Cairo, 
there was a cry from one of the coaches for us to 
look up at the sky. There were masts, minarets, 
and the whole city, in fact, painted on the sky. It 
was my first sight of the mirage I had heard so 
much about. We were then half-way from Suez 
to Cairo. 

I put up at Shepheard's Hotel, and immedi- 
ately arranged to go out to the pyramids, ten 
miles from Cairo. Fifty donkey boys rivaled one 
another to get my custom. My donkey started off, 
and the first thing I knew he was rolling over me 
in the sand. He had stepped in a gopher-hole, and 
down he went. Travelers now go out in trolley- 
cars, eat ice-cream and drink champagne under the 

209 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

shade of the pyramids, and a splendid hotel stands 
alongside the Sphinx. 

In going up the pyramids it took three Arabs, 
two to push and one to pull, to get me to the top. 
When we got half-way up, an Arab wanted more 
bakshish. I talked to him pretty loud in some- 
thing he didn't understand, and he consented to 
take me farther. The top of the pyramid of 
Ghizeh has been taken away, and the pyramid is 
now about fifteen feet square at the summit. I 
made up my mind, the moment I saw the pyra- 
mids, that these gigantic blocks were not stone, 
but had been produced by one of the lost arts in 
preparing concrete. It occurred to me, as the 
pyramids were hollow to the base, that they had 
been storehouses for grain, and were not built as 
tombs for the Rameses and Ptolemies. Humane 
kings had built them, I thought, in order to employ 
labor in time of dearth. 

As all travelers are told, it was said that a man 
would go down one pyramid and come up on 
another in so many minutes. I had seen such a 
number of " fakes " in my travels that, as I could 
not tell one Chinaman from another, how should I 
be able to tell one Arab from another! When this 
trick was done for me I thought it did not follow 
that the man on the other pyramid was the man 
who had been with me. 

I was surprised when I left Cairo to find a 
modern railway, that had been built by Said 

210 



TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 

Pasha. We took the train for Alexandria. At 
Alexandria we took passage for the Holy Land. 
The Rev. J. R. MacFarlane, chaplain of Madras, 
wanted to see Jerusalem and landed at Joppa, or 
Jaffa, which has become famous for Napoleon's 
massacre. 

In going through the Valley of Sharon, we saw 
orange and lemon groves, and fruits of all 
kinds. It was a lovely valley, but all of a sudden 
we struck into the most desolate country I had 
ever seen — a mountain, a desert, a wilderness of 
rocks, ravines and caiions. There were rocks to 
the right, rocks to the left, and rocks everywhere. 
My dragoman had a mule and I a donkey. One of 
these mules had irreverently been named Christ 
and the other Jesus. To the perfect horror of the 
clergyman — until he understood that the men could 
say nothing else in English — the names of the 
donkeys were spoken with every crack of the whip 
all the way to Jerusalem. The lashing of those 
donkeys became a medley of seeming profanity. 

A few weeks before, several people had been 
killed by the Bedouins on the desert. Every one 
was talking about the dangers of the journey. 
After we got over this wild district, through the 
Valley of Jehoshaphat, we came upon a plateau and 
saw Jerusalem in the distance. Beautiful is that 
city for situation. Said my companions, at the 
same instant, " There are the Bedouins ! '* A half 
dozen horsemen were coming from the direction of 

211 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Jerusalem. We feared danger, but Abram the 
dragoman showed no fear. These men were 
really not dangerous, being only "barkers" for 
the hotels of Jerusalem. Neither my companion 
nor myself had any idea that they were employes 
of that kind. 

One asked if we would go to " Smith's " near 
Mount Calvary, to " Jones's " near the Via della 
Eosa, or to another house on the site of Solomon's 
Temple. MacFarlane said, "Don't notice these 
people. Leave it to the dragoman." He decided 
that we should go to Smith's. From that time, 
until we left, for three days, I saw nothing 
but humbug and tinsel, lying and cheating, ugly 
women, sand-fleas and dogs, from Joppa through 
Kamlah. The one lovely place was an oasis where 
we stopped for luncheon. Of course this was a 
long time before Mark Twain went there and wept 
over the tomb of Adam. 

In going through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, up 
the Mount of Olives, of course I was impressed 
with what survived of my Biblical education. New 
England training was still strong in me. The 
women of Bethlehem, carrying baskets on their 
heads, with flowing robes of calico, were very 
beautiful and healthy-looking; but when I got to 
Bethlehem, and with my farm and cattle experience 
looked for stalls and mangers, I was, of course, 
disgusted at being taken down two flights and 
shown an old wet cave as the place where the 

212 



TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND 



Saviour was said to have been born. I have kept 
the morals of the old Methodists, I hope, but my 
superstitious notions were disappearing every 
minute I spent in Jerusalem. 

Being in the Holy Land, all the stories I had 
heard in boyhood came back to me. I thought of 
Moses's life. I had been taught to obey his com- 
mandments, but as a child I saw that he had 
broken in his own life those which say, thou shalt 
not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery — had told 
Aaron, his brother-in-law, to make a golden image, 
and had got up a trust by means of which he might 
get all the gold. " Thou shalt do no murder," says 
the law — but he killed an Egyptian and hid him in 
the sand. " Thou shalt not commit adultery " — 
but he committed that sin. 

And so on to the end. These commandments 
were taught by the man who had broken every one 
of them himself. Aaron, who wished to be in- 
cluded in the gold-comer into which Moses had 
refused him admittance, sought to make money in 
some other way, and said, " If we are going for 
forty years into the wilderness, we shall want salt 
provisions," and so bought up all the hogs he could 
find, without letting Moses into the corner. Then 
Moses spoiled the whole game by the law that no 
Jews should eat pork! In the Holy Land these 
things all came into my mind. You can imagine 
how I felt sixteen years after, when arrested and 
detained for six months in the Tombs for quoting 

213 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

three columns of the Bible (about which I shall 
speak later). 

At night I wanted my clergyman companion 
to gain an idea of night scenes in the East. To 
make sure that we should not be disturbed, I went 
to the chief of police for a guide to show us Jeru- 
salem by candle-light. We went into a dark alley, 
back of Mount Calvary and the Via della Rosa, 
when the man's movements became suspicious. I 
could not see why a policeman should be so care- 
ful where he went. My object had been to see the 
demi-monde of Syria. 

When we got to the door, the policeman tried to 
shut the door, but I put my foot in the way. I 
asked MacFarlane if he was armed. He said he 
had a Madras dagger. MacFarlane was already 
in the room and I drew him out. " Those are 
Bedouins," said I ; " I could see their pistols and 
swords." Intuition told me they were murderers. 
Sixteen persons had been killed in Nablus in 
'55-56. The chief of police was the head of the 
gang. I immediately saw our consul, and there 
was a meeting of representatives of the foreign 
powers, and the whole traffic was exposed. In 
our case they found the men, and after we left 
they were executed. 



214 



CHAPTER XVI 

IN THE CRIMEA 
1856 

The voyage from Joppa to Constantinople was 
a succession of surprises, from Latokea to Lan- 
arca, Cji^rus, Rhodes, and Smyrna. At Beyrout 
we were the guests of a pasha, the leading man of 
the place. Henry Kennard, banker, of Heywood, 
Kennard & Co., of London, who had joined us in 
Jerusalem, went with us through Syria and was 
going as far as the Crimea. MacFarlane was still 
with our party. We had a day off in Beyrout, and 
went up to Lebanon, inland, where the cedars seem 
to antedate the olive-trees in the Garden of Geth- 
semane. 

When we got to Smyrna we entered a beauti- 
ful bay, somewhat like that of Rio Janeiro, and I 
went out on the fortified hill that overlooks the 
city. I saw from the hill that troops were march- 
ing on parade, and went off alone to see them. I 
was told to let my donkey go his own way. He 
brought me to a place where were about one hun- 
dred stone steps, almost perpendicular. I had a 

215 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

little hesitation about going down these steps, but 
he seemed to know what he was about, and I could 
do nothing with him but hang on his back. I ex- 
pected him to tumble, and that would have been 
the last of me. He didn't miss a step, however, but 
took me safely to the bottom. I thought of General 
Putnam's stone-step ride. If he had only had a 
Turkish donkey he would have missed being a 
hero. 

My donkey seemed to know more than I about 
the streets of Smyrna, and I gave him the rein. 
He took me past the sentinels to the parade 
ground, as he appeared to know the password, and 
across the parade, which was against regulations. 
When we arrived at the center of the ground, he 
began very peculiar operations, as if he had been 
with Barnum. Here was a donkey that would 
have made a fortune for a circus. The soldiers 
were coming up in platoons, when the donkey be- 
gan to stand on his hind feet, and then on his fore 
feet. The roar of the advancing regiment con- 
vinced me that I was in a tight place. I got off 
his back and walked alone on the opposite side, and 
then escaped through a gate. I have never heard 
of the obstinate animal since. 

From Smyrna to Constantinople we passed 
among famous Greek islands — Ehodes, and Chios, 
where twenty-two thousand Greeks were killed by 
the Turks — but we had not time to stop at any of 
them. At Constantinople I preferred to take pas- 

216 



IN THE CRIMEA 



sage in a transient steamer, instead of waiting 
for the Government boat. I stopped here only 
to see our minister, Carroll Spence, of Balti- 
more, and then hurried on through the Mar- 
moro Strait and the Bosporus, and into the Black 
Sea, and there found an immense fleet of trans- 
ports, from the port of Sebastopol. I was de- 
lighted to see alongside of one another three of our 
Boston clippers, built by Donald Mackay in East 
Boston, that had brought French troops from 
France: the Great Republic, Captain Limeburner, 
the Monarch of the Seas, Captain Gardner, and the 
Ocean Queen of clippers. Captain Zerega. Ships 
filled the little bay, bows and sterns touching the 
shore on one side and the other. Not one could 
have got out in case of fire. 

We immediately got horses to go out to Bala- 
klava, and there I was glad to meet my old friend. 
Captain Furber, of the Black Ball Line and the 
Ocean Clipper, who gave me a state-room and all 
the courtesies of his ship. He had come for the 
French. Kennard went with the British. Horses 
and attendants were furnished me by the French 
generals free of cost. 

My object in going to the Crimea was to specu- 
late in munitions of war, which I supposed would 
be sold for a mere bagatelle. But the armies took 
their material away with them — English, Russian, 
Turkish, French, Sardinian — so there was no 
chance for business there. The British troops 

217 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

were in rags and tatters. Their new uniforms 
had not arrived, and their shoes were worn out. 
I went on board one of the clippers and spoke 
about the shoes not having arrived. " "What ! " 
exclaimed the captain ; " I am loaded with shoes I 
I have been here six months." " Have you noti- 
fied the commissary?" "Yes." "What could I 
do? All this was afterward described by "Bull 
Eun " Russell. He was then the correspondent of 
the London Times, and so exposed the misman- 
agement of the war that ships were sent with pro- 
visions, uniforms, and everything, after the war 
was over. 

Through the courtesy of French officers, I 
visited the city of Sebastopol, a ten-mile journey 
from Balaklava, and saw the twenty-one-gun 
battery, the Redan, and the MalakofP, and, of 
course, the ruin of the famous city. I could 
see the masts of the ships at the entrance of the 
bay, the fleet that had been sunk by the Russians 
to block the channel. Here they had crossed in the 
night to the Star Fort on the opposite side, which 
was strongly fortified. It would have been almost 
impossible for the allied armies to interfere with 
the Russians. They had made up their minds to 
fight it out to the end. 

The French zouave commander got up a ban- 
quet for me with twenty of the officers of all the 
armies — Turkish, French, English, Sardinian, and 
Russian. I did something to stir up the battle 

218 



IN THE CRIMEA 



spirit again, and several times almost got them 
fighting over the table, especially when I asked 
some question that brought a reply from .the 
zouave general of the Ninety-sixth regiment of 
Algiers. He rose and said to the Englishmen 
who had disputed his word : " You were asleep 
at the Alma, you were late at Inkerman, late at 
Balaklava, ran from the Redan and at Chernaya." 
This of course roused the English officers, and 
we had to pour oil on troubled waters. 

There were two princes among the Russians, 
and of course they were delighted to see the 
allies fighting among themselves. They helped me 
in stirring up the quarrel. I made them admit 
that Todleben's earthworks were a new feature 
in war — baskets of earth used for forts on the in- 
side of Sebastopol, put up impromptu, and hold- 
ing these armies so long at bay. In the Redan it 
was complete slaughter, two thousand persons be- 
ing killed. MacMahon in the Malakoff saw at 
once that it was not a close fort, and said, " J^y 
suis, j^y reste." Speaking of MacMahon, a very 
singular thing has been suggested. Put together 
a half dozen faces of French notables — Mac- 
Mahon, de Lesseps, Alexandre Dumas {pere et 
fils), Victor Hugo, President Faure, and add my 
portrait, and you could hardly tell which was 
which. 

Tennyson has given to the charge of the Light 
Brigade at Balaklava the power of his name and 
10 219 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

genius, but that fight has been a terribly exagger- 
ated affair, so far as massacre was concerned. 
Only one third was killed, with nearly one half 
the horses. In our civil war, where a million 
men were killed, at the cost of a billion dollars, 
from the firing into Sumter to Appomattox, on 
both sides, there were many charges where the 
slaughter was proportionately greater than that. 
Take Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, where a whole 
division was mowed down — or Custer's command 
(with Sitting Bull, in the Black Hills), all mas- 
sacred, with the exception of one man. 



220 



CHAPTER XVII 

HOME ONCE MORE AND THEN A RETURN TO EUROPE 

1856 

From the Crimea I returned to England and 
thence to America. Wilson, of the White Star 
Line, wished to construct the largest clipper ever 
built in England. It was to be called the George 
Francis Train, as I had had in my consignment 
or in my charge the fastest four clippers in the 
world — Flying Cloud, eighty-six days from New 
York to San Francisco; Sovereign of the Seas, 
which stood in my name at the custom-house 
(2,200 tons), which made three hundred and 
seventy-four miles under sail in one day, a thing 
never known before by a sailing ship; the Red 
Jacket, built at Rockland, Maine; and the Light- 
ning, built by Donald Mackay at East Boston, 
which sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne in 
sixty-three days; but I declined the White Star 
honors. 

The day after my arrival in New York, in July, 
'56 — I had been away since February, '53 — the 
Herald had sixteen columns, about three pages, 

221 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

from me in one issue, an amount of space I 
think that no correspondent before or since has 
had — either from India, China, or Japan. I had 
arrived ahead of my own mail. The members of 
the present staff of the Herald have no idea that 
the man whom they have looked upon as a lunatic 
was sufficiently sane to make a big sensation in 
their paper in July, '56. The present James 
Gordon Bennett was then only fifteen years old. 
Frederick Hudson had entire charge of the paper 
under the elder Bennett. Mr. Bennett, wishing to 
put his son ahead, pensioned Mr. Hudson, who 
went into the country to live, and, in crossing a 
railway track, was killed. Mr. Bennett gave me a 
very kind reception. He asked if I desired to go 
to Congress. " No," I said. " Don't you want to 
publish books ? " " Yes, but I am going abroad 
now, as I am not through with my business in Aus- 
tralia." 

Here, at twenty-seven years of age, I had trav- 
eled over the world, and had had these great busi- 
ness experiences. I had been called, as a sneer- 
ing term, "Young America." I kept the name, 
and used it afterward in all my newspaper work. 
But Freeman Hunt, of the Merchants' Magazine, 
who edited my books, changed it to An Ameri- 
can Merchant in Europe, Asia, and Australia, 
thinking the title Young America not dignified 
enough. This book was a series of letters from 
Java, Singapore, China, Bengal, Egypt, the Holy 

222 






HOME ONCE MORE 



Land, the Crimea, England, Melbourne, Sydney, 
etc. It was published in '57 in New York and 
London. 

From New York I went to Boston, and es- 
caped my first opportunity of going to jail by giv- 
ing bail bond for $80,000. George B. Upton repre- 
sented my house in Boston and was in Europe. He 
was traveling at the time, and his people instructed 
him to have me arrested for any interest the Bar- 
ings might have, through open credits, in our firm. 
Colonel Enoch Train and Donald Mackay signed 
the bond. The claim was that I had made a 
lot of money, and had not given to others what 
was their due. I had never used the Barings' 
credit out in Australia, and returned to them 
$50,000. So far as Upton was concerned, I had 
paid my partner. Captain Caldwell, $8,000 in cash, 
when he went home in the Red Jacket only a few 
months after his arrival in Melbourne. This was 
my first false arrest and legal prosecution. From 
this time for many years I kept getting into jail, 
for no crime whatever. 

After looking over the accounts in the books for 
'57, Upton came the next year to me in New York, 
just as I was going abroad, and said, " We are in a 
tight place in Boston." Imagine my astonish- 
ment when he asked if I was willing that any little 
account coming to me should be placed to my 
credit, and used to help him out. Considering 
that I had been arrested for $80,000, I thought 

223 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

this peculiar. He gave me a credit for £500 on the 
Barings, however; it seems that $6,000 had been 
sent to me by the house in Melbourne while I was 
away. Inasmuch as I have never since inquired 
how my account stood with Upton, I should like 
to have his son look at the books, and see what may 
be due me. 

In *56 I took my wife and baby Sue to Paris. I 
had observed in Europe that the Germans were 
more far-sighted than we in learning many lan- 
guages. The bright German boy in a country 
town is taught French and English, and then 
sent to Bremen or Hamburg to get the practical 
education of merchants in great shipping houses. 
Afterward, he is sent to England to find out other 
modes of doing business. Then perhaps he estab- 
lishes a house in New York. I found that German 
merchants, all over the world, were far ahead of 
ours, because of their practical training and mas- 
tery of languages. Seeing, in my travels around 
the world, that the German was everywhere, I de- 
termined to learn languages, and went to Paris for 
that purpose. 

We took rooms at the Grand Hotel de Louvre, 
in the Rue de Rivoli, and I at once went to Galign- 
ani, of " The Messenger," to find teachers. Un- 
der a Catholic priest, I studied Italian and French 
at the same time, which may account for my hav- 
ing a little of the Italian accent in my French. 
I have never known an Italian who was able to 

224 



HOME ONCE MORE 



master the French accent. I also learned Portu- 
guese and Spanish. This gave me the four Latin 
languages. I had, in '48, studied German under 
Gasper Btitts, who came to America during the 
Revolution of '48 with Carl Schurz. German 
texts and pronunciation I had to practise every 
day, but as I have never had a fancy for that lan- 
guage, I have not kept it up. I sent my sons to 
Frankfort-on-the-Main to learn German, and after- 
ward to Seelig's College in Vevey, Switzerland, 
in 71, to learn Italian and French. My daughter 
Sue was sent to Stuttgart, and she is thoroughly 
acquainted with both German and French. 



225 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MEN I MET IN PARIS 

1856-1857 

My life in Paris seems now like a romance to 
my memory. I was twenty-seven, and thought I 
had seen all the world, but discovered how little 
I knew, compared with others whom I met. I 
found, as in all these foreign cities, that notables 
in society and in public life often did not know one 
another. At Count Arthur De La More's, of the 
Orleanist staff, I found the greatest hostility 
toward the Emperor. One day we were sitting in 
the entresol, at his rooms on the Rue de Rivoli, 
opposite the Tuileries, and he asked me whether I 
could see that man walking on the veranda of the 
Tuileries. I said I could, to which he replied: 
" Could one of your sharpshooters pick him off 
from here ? " I looked up with surprise, and 
thought I saw the future assassin of the Em- 
peror, but said nothing. I told him some of our 
men like Daniel Boone and David Crockett could 
have picked off a squirrel as far as they could see 
it. It was a little while after this that the Orsini 

226 



MEN I MET IN PAKIS 



bomb was fired at the Emperor. This was be- 
cause Napoleon, though a member of the Carbo- 
nari, had "gone back on" the order; but his life 
was spared. 

Prince Galitzen of Russia gave me a dinner 
at the Cafe Philippe, where I met some of the 
Russian nobility. These men were the cleverest 
I have ever seen. All were good linguists, artists, 
statesmen, soldiers, men of the world. At Prince 
Czartoryski's I met leading Poles, who were still 
revolutionists, plotting against Russia. One of 
these, a man of about eighty, said to me : " In my 
teens I went to St. Petersburg, saw Alexander 
and told him the condition of Poland. I asked 
him what he was going to do. He asked me what 
I should recommend. * There are two ways of 
governing Poland,* I said ; * through interest or 
through fear.' Fear was the policy adopted. When 
I was forty, I again went to St. Petersburg. 
Nicholas was Czar, and he repeated the same ques- 
tion. I again answered, * through interest or 
through fear.' When I was sixty I met another 
Emperor, and the same question was put to me, 
and I made the same reply. Poland is parti- 
tioned," he added; "and we are now only a 
memory." 

At Leon Lillo's I met many Spaniards of the 
nobility and the ruling family. I still think that 
Lillo was the son of Queen Cristina, by her hus- 
band the Duke of Rianzares, a common soldier, of 

227 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



physical beauty, whom she had taken from the 
ranks and made a Duke. I used to meet him at 
Lillo^s. Cristina, who was then probably the 
richest woman in the world, had bought Malmai- 
son, the palace of Josephine. It was through this 
connection that I met Salamanca, the Spanish 
Eothschild, her banker. I shall speak later of 
how I got the funds to build the Atlantic and 
Great Western Railway, connecting the Erie Rail- 
way with the Ohio and Mississippi Railway. 

At the Marquis del Grillo's I met his wife, the 
great Italian tragedienne, Ristori, whom I had seen 
on the stage in " Elizabeth." I met leading men of 
the Second Empire at the house of the Count de 
Rouville, including Persigny, the Foreign Min- 
ister, Count de Morny, the Minister of War, 
Walewski, Prince " Plon-Plon," and Mocquard, pri- 
vate secretary to the Emperor. At Triat's Gym- 
nase I met the men who afterward organized the 
Commune. At the house of Mrs. Winfield Scott, 
who was then living in Paris, I met many Ameri- 
cans, and at Castle's I saw " Bohemia." 

Meeting all these different persons, distin- 
guished in the great world of Paris, I was gaining 
the knowledge that would make me a walking 
library of political affairs in Europe. This made 
up for the loss of a college career. Practical ex- 
perience and observation were my university. 

That year, '56-'57, was a very important time 
in my life in many ways. I received an invitation 

228 



MEN I MET IN PARIS 



to a ball at the Tuileries, engraved in the usual 
style, on a card a foot square, and bearing the 
enormous seal of the Second Empire. For the 
first time in my life I appeared in borrowed 
plumes. I hired what I call a " flunkey " suit, and 
paid forty-five francs for it. In this I was pre- 
sented. It was not a civil nor a military suit, but 
a sort of mongrel affair, that served me as a 
court costume. Of course, my wife appeared in 
proper evening dress. There were four thousand 
persons present, the highest in the society of 
Paris, military and civil — ambassadors in their re- 
galia, regimental oflScers in their different uni- 
forms, and the aristocracy in their robes. There 
were also Algerian oflScers. Although the Tuile- 
ries was very large, the four thousand guests 
found themselves in much crowded rooms. 

During this reception and ball I suddenly felt 
some cold substance going down my back. Putting 
my hand to my neck, I found there a cupful of ice- 
cream that an Algerian officer had dropped, with 
the usual " Pardon, monsieur." I assured him 
it was all right, but the ice-cream gave me a decid- 
edly boreal feeling. 

The ball was in the usual court style, and I 
shall not undertake to describe it. After some 
time had passed, all at once there was silence, in- 
stead of the terrible hum. It was the presage of 
something important, I felt sure. The wax candles 
in the chandeliers burned brilliantly, and we were 

229 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

all on the qui vive to know what was coming. L®ok- 
ing toward the great folding doors at the end of 
the hall, a lady appeared. It was the age of crino- 
line, and she must have had a circumference of 
eight feet. She was the Emperor's favorite, the 
Countess Castiglione. The sensation she made 
was tremendous. 

I should mention that before this happened I 
had been presented to the Empress. We were all 
ranged in diplomatic order for presentation, and 
when it came my turn she seemed particularly 
courteous, saying in English to me : " You speak 
French very fluently." To this I replied: 
" When I am able to speak French, your Majesty, 
as well as you speak English, I shall be willing to 
trust myself in that language. In the meanwhile 
let me ask you to talk as you prefer." All those 
presented seemed surprised to see me talking with 
the Empress, as it was, I believe, unusual for a 
foreigner and a newcomer to be thus honored. She 
was very gracious, and made me feel as much 
at home as if I had been in my own family. 
The introduction of the crinoline had been made by 
the Empress before the birth of the Prince Impe- 
rial. Anti-Imperialists had been busy gossiping 
about the coming event, and intimated that it was 
impossible the Emperor could become the father 
of a child. 

After the Countess Castiglione appeared in 
such dare-devil fashion, in the presence of the 

230 



MEN I MET IN PAKIS 



whole court, the Empress appeared in much differ- 
ent mood. The next day she went to England, 
and became the guest of the Queen for three 
weeks. 

The Italian war was then going on, and I was 
desirous of mastering the Italian language, in 
order to carry out certain contracts I had made 
with the Emperor. McHenry was my partner, 
and I had written to him that the Emperor 
wanted a half dozen steamers immediately. The 
French needed the boats for the transport of pro- 
visions. McHenry was in London, and in my let- 
ter I told him there was no doubt that the war 
would eventually be won by France and Italy. 
This was just after the great battles of Magenta 
and Solferino. He sent me back this despatch: 
" La paix est signe." You can imagine my sur- 
prise. It shows that the most careful of men 
sometimes make mistakes. 

Mr. Seward, afterward Secretary of State, 
was in Paris in '56-57, and I showed him as much 
of Paris as I dared. There were certain places 
to which I did not feel authorized to take him, but 
I managed to make him see a great deal of Paris 
that would have been sealed to him had he under- 
taken to go about this microcosmic city without 
a guide. 

Mr. Seward astonished me very much one day 
by a remark showing his detachment from the 
great world of European thought and power. I 

231 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

said to him : " Mr. Seward, how would you like to 
see M. Lamartine ? " " Which Lamartine ? " he 
coolly asked, as if there could be more than one. 
" Why, Alphonse de Lamartine," said I. " There 
is only one Lamartine in France or in the world." 
He asked if I knew him. I replied that Lamartine 
gave receptions twice a week, and that I had at- 
tended them during the winter. As there was a 
reception that day, I asked Mr. Seward if he cared 
to go. He very gladly accepted the invitation, and 
we went together. 

Lamartine, it will be remembered, married an 
English lady, a most charming, lovely woman ; but 
he had never learned to speak English. He was 
like Hugo in this respect, and thought it was not 
worth while to struggle through the intricacies 
and difficulties of the spelling and pronunciation. 
But Madame Lamartine spoke French very 
fluently and accurately. 

I have observed as an invariable rule, from 
one end of the world to the other, that if one per- 
son addresses another in a language the second 
person does not understand, the talker thinks he 
can make himself understood by simply bawling 
out his sentences like a town-crier. Mr. Seward 
was no exception to this common frailty among 
mankind. When he saw that Lamartine did not 
understand his English, he placed his hand over 
his mouth, and shouted into M. Lamartine's ear. 
The great Frenchman smiled at each discharge, 

232 



MEN I MET IN PARIS 



but could not reply. At last I said, " Mr. Sew- 
ard, M. Lamartine is not deaf, but he does not un- 
derstand English. If you will permit either 
Madame Lamartine or myself to interpret for you, 
there will be no difficulty." Mr. Seward con- 
tinued to shout for some time, but finally broke 
down. Madame Lamartine and I then translated 
his remarks to Lamartine. After this we got along 
finely, and a most delightful conversation followed 
between the two men. 

It had been my intention, when I came to Paris, 
to go on to Australia ; but as I passed through the 
various countries of Europe I saw that the shadow 
of panic and failure rested upon all. I had, in- 
deed, completed many arrangements for going 
back to Melbourne, and I had got a letter of 
credit from the representative in London of the 
Bank of New South Wales for £20,000; but the 
project fell through, because of the panics and 
disasters of the year *57. 

In '58 — I may mention at this place — I had a 
few months' leisure on my hands, and decided to 
give my wife and her stepmother, Mrs. George T. 
M. Davis, a trip about Europe. We traveled 
through France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. At 
Leghorn we went to witness a spectacular exhibi- 
tion of the storming of Sebastopol. It was a mag- 
nificent spectacle, realistic in the extreme. No one 
was astonished, when, at the very point where the 
city was taken and the fort blown up, a terrific 

233 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

burst of light appeared. Instantly thereafter we 
discovered that the explosion had been too real. 
The theater was ablaze. Of course there was a 
wild rush for the doors. Panic followed, and 
while we were crushed and trampled in the press, 
we got off finally with only severe bruises. The 
official report next morning gave the casualties as 
forty killed and one hundred injured ; but the Gov- 
ernment suppressed the facts. The dead and in- 
jured far outnumbered these figures. 

We had an experience in Naples which illus- 
trated the every-day use of words by the English 
that to us are offensive. We were aboard one of 
the dirty little steamboats that were found in that 
part of the Mediterranean, and, as the weather 
was somewhat rough, the bilge water had been 
shaken about in the night, and a terrible odor per- 
vaded every nook of the vessel. An English 
nobleman was aboard, and in the morning, wish- 
ing to say something agreeable to my wife's step- 
mother, he said: "Madam, didn't you observe a 
dreadful stink in your state-room last night?" 
The blood of all the Pomeroys was fired by this 
supposed indelicacy. " Sir ! " Mrs. Davis retorted, 
stepping back with great hauteur. I immediately 
advanced and said, " My dear madam, the gentle- 
man meant no harm. The English prefer that 
* nasty ' word to something more refined and less 
shocking. He meant no insult." The Englishman 
explained ; but the lady was not appeased. 

234 



MEN I MET IN PARIS 



At Rome I was astonished to find a delegation 
awaiting me. I could not make out what it meant, 
when I was hailed as a " liberator." There were 
many " liberators " in the Italy of those days ; and 
I supposed they mistook me for Mazzini, or Gari- 
baldi, or Orsini, or some other leader of the peo- 
ple. "Whom do you think I am?" I asked. 
" Citizen George Francis Train," they said. This 
was too much for my credulity. What was worse 
still, they asked ne to go with them. I did not 
know just where they expected me to go, or what 
they would expect me to do when I got there. 
Things were pretty black in Italy just then, and I 
did not desire to be mixed up in " revolutions," or 
liberty movements, or conspiracies. However, 
they assured me that it would be all right, and I 
consented to go. I went through a dark alley, to 
their meeting place, and was told more things 
about the revolution than I cared to know or to 
remember. It was not a healthful kind of knowl- 
edge to carry about Italy with one. 

But the curious thing about the affair was that 
here, as everywhere, these people regarded me as 
a leader of revolts — Carbonari, La Commune, 
Chartists, Fenians, Internationals — as if I were 
ready for every species of deviltry. For fifteen 
years five or six governments kept their spies 
shadowing me in Europe and America. 

From Italy we passed into Austria. At 
Vienna we had the opportunity, through the cour- 
17 235 



MY LIFE IN MAlsFY STATES 

tesy of some friends near the court, of witnessing 
a splendid celebration by the Order of Maria 
Teresa, which was the most gorgeous and most 
beautiful spectacle I think I have ever seen. We 
soon returned to London, and then came to 
America, where I was to resume work on projects 
and enterprises here. 



236 



CHAPTER XIX 

BUILDING THE ATLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN 
RAILWAY 

1857-1858 

The great project of a connecting railway be- 
tween the Eastern and the Middle Western States 
had been in my mind for some years. Queen 
Maria Cristina's fortune, which was then the 
greatest possessed by any woman in the world, 
seemed to me to offer a solution of the problem. 
I had no idea, of course, of attempting to use her 
fortune in any schemes of my own and for my 
own interest, but I saw at once that I could utilize 
her idle wealth to the tremendous advantage of 
the United States and, at the same time, render a 
service to her. 

The Queen had had a large quantity of funds 
in the old United States Bank that President Jack- 
son smashed, and James McHenry, who was con- 
nected with me in many enterprises, learned that 
she had taken as securities some coal lands in 
Pennsylvania. I saw the Duke of Rianzares, the 
guardsman Fernando IMuiioz, whom Maria Cris- 

237 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

tina had fallen in love with and made a grandee 
of her kingdom, and finally married in '44. He had 
his headquarters at Lillo's in the Square Clary, 
and he introduced me to the Queen's secretary, 
Salerno. I suggested to the Spaniards the ad- 
visability of hunting up these coal lands of the 
Queen. McHenry had already made arrange- 
ments for me to go to America with her assistant 
secretary, Don Eodrigo de Questa, who did not 
know a word of English. The preliminaries were 
arranged, and we set out for Liverpool and 
America. 

One of the first of many difficulties into which 
poor de Questa fell because of his ignorance of 
English occurred the first day out from Liverpool. 
The Spaniard, with a fatuous assumption common 
to Europeans, thought that whenever he failed to 
find the exact word he wanted in another tongue 
than his own, all that was necessary was to use 
French. The Spaniard asked the steward to gef 
him some fish for breakfast. He knew the Span- 
ish word would not answer, and could not think of 
the English word, though he had tried to master 
it for some time. He then fell back upon the 
French, and asked for " poisson." Of course, the 
steward thought he wanted poison, and reported 
the matter to headquarters, thinking suicide was 
contemplated. 

De Questa would have had serious trouble but 
for the thoughtfulness of the steward, who remem- 

238 



BUILDING THE ATLANTIC RAILWAY 

bered that I was traveling with him and came to 
me for advice. "When did he ask for poison!'' 
I inquired. " At breakfast-time/' said the stew- 
ard. " Oh, then, he merely wants fish," and I ex- 
plained as well as I could to an English steward 
the meaning of the French word. 

The English of the ignorant classes look upon 
French very much as a clergyman does upon pro- 
fanity, or as a missionary regards the muttered 
charms and incantations of a " voodoo " priestess. 
De Questa finally got his fish, but he had long be- 
fore lost his appetite. This adventure discour- 
aged him so much that he refused thenceforth to 
try to convey in English, Castilian, or French, 
any of his desires concerning food, but resorted 
to the primitive sign language. When he wanted 
eggs, he would flap his arms together and cackle 
like a hen that has just laid an egg. The steward 
who, perhaps, had never seen two square inches of 
countryside in his life, thought he was imitating a 
rooster and laughed until he almost had a fit. De 
Questa nearly starved. He had, at last, to eat 
whatever he could find, without trying to seek 
what he wanted. I explained to him that roosters 
did not lay eggs ! 

Our destination was Philadelphia. It was 
there that the Spaniards who were living upon 
Queen Maria Cristina's property had their head- 
quarters. I found two of them, Christopher and 
John Fallon, living in fine houses, with something 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

of a court about them. They had control of about 
forty thousand acres of coal lands belonging to 
the Queen. This large tract was situated at a 
place to which the Fallons had given their name, 
Fallonville. I at once consulted several of the 
best lawyers of Philadelphia, among them William 
B. Keed, later Minister to China, and was ad- 
vised to go immediately to the lands and see what 
had been done with them. I made an appoint- 
ment with John Fallon, and we went out to the 
mines. I can not now recall exactly where they 
were, but I remember that we passed through a 
wilderness, after leaving the train that took us 
from Philadelphia, and that we had a very long 
drive in carriages. A railway track had been 
built through the forest to the mines, and it seemed 
to me about fifteen miles long. I appeared to John 
Fallon as a foreigner who was interested in mines 
and in coal lands in particular, but not, of course, 
as representing the Queen. 

As soon as I returned to Philadelphia and re- 
ported what I had learned, my lawyers advised me 
to go back to Paris and report to the Queen. De 
Questa and I, therefore, returned as soon as pos- 
sible. McHenry met me in London, and we went 
on to Paris together. We had a conference with 
Lillo and with Don Jose de Salamanca, the Queen's 
banker, and it was decided that the Queen should 
take active possession of her immense property 
at once. I saw that there was a great deal of 

240 



BUILDING THE ATLANTIC RAILWAY 



money in the land, and that there was a fine op- 
portunity for the Atlantic and Great Western 
Railway, if I could in some way get the use of a 
portion of this vast coal domain. 

I saw also that my connection with the af- 
fair had already given me a lever with which 
I could work to some purpose upon Don Josd 
de Salamanca, and that this was the best card to 
play. 

As soon as possible I went to his banking 
office and asked for a conference. I had learned 
enough, in my dealings with bankers and finan- 
ciers, to know that you must approach them on 
the right side, from the side of money, and not 
from that of a mere wish. Accordingly I wrote 
on my card that I wished to propose a loan of 
$1,000,000. I really came as a borrower, but cir- 
cumstances permitted me to play the role of the 
lender. I was admitted at once, but if I had asked 
outright for a loan I should have been shown the 
door. As soon as I was in his presence I said, 
without preface : " I have no cash in my pockets, 
nor would you wish it if I had ; but I want to show 
you something." 

" I understood that 3"ou wanted to lend me a 
million," said the Spaniard. " I do not see the 
million." 

" You will, when I explain," I said. " I want 
to use your credit." (I knew that he had none 
in London and that he could do nothing there.) 

241 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" I propose to deposit with you $2,000,000 of the 
bonds of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway 
for $1,000,000 of your notes." 

I knew that the bait of a credit in London 
would affect him, as the Spanish bankers had long 
tried in vain to establish their credit in the finan- 
cial metropolis of the world. 

" Where is this property? " he asked. 

I drew a diagram of the property for him, ex- 
plaining its location and its relation to other prop- 
erties and enterprises. I told him of the Erie 
Eailway, ending at Olean, and the Ohio and Mis- 
sissippi Railway from Cincinnati to St. Louis. 
" There is no connection between these two great 
highways," I said, " and a highway that will con- 
nect them will prove a fortune-maker to every one 
associated with the project." I explained that 
there were only four hundred miles between the 
two, and how I purposed filling in this gap. Be- 
tween the two ends of the completed railways lay 
three wealthy States. This road has since been 
reorganized under the name of the New York, 
Pennsylvania and Ohio, or as it is colloquially 
called, the " Nyp. and 0." Near Olean now exists 
a town that has the name of my Spanish friend, 
Salamanca. 

My arguments touched Salamanca, but did not 
capture him. They paved the way, however, for 
his complete capitulation a little later. My next 
step was to go to London and confer with the Ken- 

242 



BUILDING THE ATLANTIC KAILWAY 

nards, famous bankers of that city. We arranged 
that a nephew of the Kennards, a son of Robert 
William Kennard, then a member of Parliament, 
and an engineer of note, should accompany me 
to America and go over the entire ground of the 
jDroposed route. 

We came to New York in October, '57, and 
shortly after we arrived had a conference at the 
St. Nicholas Hotel, in Broadway, with the men 
who were most interested in the proposed road. 
Maps were exhibited, and the plans fully ex- 
plained. We then left for Olean, where we were 
met by the contractor in charge of the road, whose 
name was Doolittle, by Morton the local engineer, 
and by General C. L. Ward, the president of the 
road. The whole party took wagons for James- 
town, forty miles away. At this point we were 
met by a committee appointed to take care of us 
and to show us what had been done, and what 
could be done. This was the program through- 
out, as we passed on from point to point. Among 
the men who met us at Jamestown was Reuben E. 
Fenton, who had just been elected Representative 
in Congress from that district, and was afterward 
Governor and United States Senator. The line 
of the road was followed as far as Dayton, Ohio, 
where it was proposed to connect with the Cleve- 
land and Cincinnati Railway. 

At Mansfield there was a great gathering in 
honor of the occasion. The committees of the 

243 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

three States — New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, 
were present, and there was speech-making. I 
made a speech, which is printed in full in 
" Spread-Eagleism," published in '58. Judge 
Bartley, afterward famous on the Federal bench, 
was chairman of the meeting. I asked if there 
were not some one present from Ohio who could 
give us a clear statement as to what we could ex- 
pect. Judge Bartley called on " Mr. Sherman." A 
tall, spare man arose. It was John Sherman. He 
made a speech that was clear, direct, and forcible. 
Among the other speakers were Eobert E. 
Schenck, of "Emma Mine" fame, who had been 
elected to Congress recently, and Senator Benjamin 
F. Wade. 

Just before the close of the meeting I intro- 
duced Thomas Kennard, the civil engineer, and 
told the crowd that the road was to be built, and 
that it would be aided by the money of Queen 
Maria Cristina of Spain and the great Spanish 
banker, Salamanca. 

I made a report in London of the work accom- 
plished in America, and at once began to purchase 
material for the road. I sought out Mr. Craw- 
shay Bailey, then a member of Parliament, and a 
great Welsh iron-master, and he invited me to 
dine with him and his wife. He had just married 
a charming young lady. At dinner, I found that 
Mrs. Bailey spoke French very fluently and that 
Mr. Bailey did not understand a word of it. So I 

244 



BUILDING THE ATLANTIC RAILWAY 



asked permission of the iron-worker to carry on a 
conversation in French with Mrs. Bailey. This 
delighted him very much, for he liked to see that 
his wife was mistress of a language of which 
he did not know a single word. This subtle flat- 
tery of his judgment and taste so pleased him 
that I was able to close a bargain with him for 
25,000 tons of iron at $40 the ton— $1,000,000— 
pledging for the debt bonds of the Atlantic and 
Great Western Railway, at two to one. This 
was the first great purchase made after the panic 
of '57. 

My second purchase was made from the Ebw- 
vale Company, of Wales. Through Manager Rob- 
inson I negotiated for 30,000 tons of iron at $40 
the ton— $1,200,000— pledging bonds of the road 
at two to one, as with Bailey. 

I have already spoken of Salamanca, the Span- 
ish Rothschild, and how I had tried to obtain his 
notes for $1,000,000. I finally succeeded in get- 
ting this loan, pledging $2,000,000 bonds of the 
road as security. At this time, no Spanish securi- 
ties had been negotiated in Lombard Street for 
years. It was highly necessary for me that these 
notes of Salamanca should be negotiated. I went 
to Mathew Marshall, Jr., of the Bank of London. 
He was the son of the old Mathew Marshall who 
had signed the notes of the Bank of England for 
fifty years. I asked him what $50,000 of the notes 
of Salamanca would be accepted at by the bank. 

245 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

He replied that they would not be accepted at all. 
" No Spanish paper can be used in London," he 
said. 

I then had recourse to a scheme that I had pre- 
viously worked out with some degree of elabora- 
tion. I asked Marshall if he would not oblige me 
by telling me, as a friend, what sixty-day bills of the 
kind I held would be worth if they could be used. 
He said they should be handled at six per centum. 
I telegraphed immediately to McHenry, in Liver- 
pool, as follows : " Marshall will not touch this 
paper under six per cent. Will Moseley " (the big 
financier there) "do it for fiveV^ McHenry an- 
swered that Moseley would not handle it for less 
than Marshall's rate, but would take $50,000 at six 
per centum. 

Upon the strength of this, four hundred miles 
of railway were built, through three great States, 
opening up a vast territory, and bringing in for- 
tunes to a large number of men. My arrange- 
ment with McHenry was that I was to receive 
£100,000 as commission. No papers were signed, 
but I asked McHenry to give me a paper settling 
$100,000 on my wife, Willie Davis Train, which 
was done. After the road was built. Sir Morton 
Peto came over from England with some London 
bankers, on McHenry's invitation. McHenry be- 
lieved in playing the part of a prince when it came 
to giving an entertainment, and he invited the 
visitors to a banquet at Delmonico's, then at Four- 

246 



BUILDING THE ATLANTIC RAILWAY 

teenth Street and Fifth Avenue. It cost him 
$15,000. 

As I had not yet secured my commission, I 
thought this was a good time to collect it, and in- 
structed my lawyer, Clark Bell, now of No. 39 
Broadway, to present and press my claim. Mc- 
Heniy was so afraid he would be arrested while 
these moneyed men were with him that he settled 
at once, giving me his notes at four months for the 
balance due. Gold was very high at this time, be- 
ing $1.90, and as the notes were on London, I 
found they could be negotiated through McHenry^s 
agents, McAudrey & Wann. It happened that 
these agents had lost some $7,000 on information 
that I had given to them about the result of the 
battle of Gettysburg; so I agreed to reimburse 
them for the loss, if they would cash the notes at 
once, which they did. 

This was in ^66, and a singular thing happened. 
When the notes fell due in London on the 6th 
May, that comparatively small amount of gold pre- 
cipitated something of a panic in the unsteady 
market of the day. Everything went with a crash. 
Moseley, the banker of Liverpool, failed for a 
large sum ; Lemuel Goddard, of London, followed 
with a loss of as much more ; Lunnon & Company 
failed for a greater amount; McHenry for some 
millions ; Sir Morton Peto for other millions ; and 
Overend, Gurney & Company for another large 
amount. This showed to me the real shallow- 

247. 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I18SS and insubstantiality of the great world of 
finance. It is built upon straw and paper. The 
secret of its great masters and " Napoleons " is 
nothing but what is known among other gamblers 
as " bluff." 



248 



CHAPTER XX 

A VISIT TO RUSSIA 

1857 

The year '57 was a memorable period in my 
life in many ways. The great panic of the time 
swept away my ambitious projects as if they had 
been so many dreams and visions. My contracts 
in Italy were destroyed by the peace of Villa 
Franca, and my Australian plans were defeated 
by the panic. I was therefore ready to take up any- 
thing that looked promising; but, as I had noth- 
ing immediately on hand, I took advantage of the 
enforced leisure to see more of England and the 
continent of Europe. 

I was in Liverpool at the time the Niagara 
arrived there for the purpose of laying the At- 
lantic cable, and suggested giving a banquet to 
Captain Hudson and Commander Pennock, who 
was my cousin, and to the other officers, at Lynn's 
Waterloo Hotel. This old landmark, the resort of 
American ship-captains for many years, was torn 
down long ago. At this time a letter came to Cap- 
tain Hudson from the Grand Duke Constantine, of 

249 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

Eussia, who had arrived at Dover in his yacht, the 
Livadia, thanking him for granting permission for 
three Russian officers to witness the laying of the 
cable. 

In this little incident I saw an opportunity for 
visiting Russia in a semi-official capacity, enabling 
me to see that country to much better advantage. 
I said to Captain Hudson that I should like to 
carry his answer to the Grand Duke. He replied 
that no answer was required, and that, besides, 
the Grand Duke had returned to St. Petersburg. 
I assured him that strict courtesy demanded an 
acknowledgment of the letter, and that it would 
make no difference to me about the Grand Duke 
being in St. Petersburg, as I expected to visit that 
city. So I persuaded him to let me take an 
answer to the Russian Prince. I suggested the 
phrasing of the letter. The Grand Duke was in- 
formed that I was visiting Russia for the purpose 
of seeing the Nijnii Novgorod fair, and that the 
United States was always glad to do anything that 
helped to repay Russia for her long friendship. 

I immediately started for London, where I 
called on the American Minister, George M. Dal- 
las. Mr. Dallas was very courteous, but he evi- 
dently wanted to have the opportunity of handing 
the letter to the Grand Duke himself. He offered 
to see that the communication was expeditiously 
and properly transmitted. " But," I said, " I de- 
sire to take it in person." I next called on John 

250 



A VISIT TO KUSSIA 



Delane, who was long the editor of the London 
Times, and he asked me to write him some letters 
from Russia. Then I left London for The Hague. 

I met at The Hague Admiral Ariens, to whom I 
had been introduced by Captain Fabius of the 
Dutch man-of-war, some years before, at Singa- 
pore. From Holland I went through Germany, 
visiting Stettin, where I saw the beginnings of 
those great ship-yards that are now sending out 
the greatest and fastest vessels on the seas. I 
took a steamer from Stettin for St. Petersburg. 

At the Russian capital I called at once on our 
minister. Governor Seymour, of Connecticut. Mr. 
Seymour made the same suggestion that Mr. 
Dallas had made. He wished to transmit the let- 
ter to the Grand Duke. But I was not to be de- 
prived of the final triumph of my schemes. I 
told the Minister that I had come all the way from 
Liverpool, and that it was my purpose to hand the 
letter to the Grand Duke, if I had to travel all over 
the Russian empire to do it. I was informed that 
it was not the season for seeing this high official, 
as he had left the city and was at his country resi- 
dence, at Strelna. 

My answer to this was, in true Yankee fash- 
ion, " AVhere is Strelna? " I was told that it was 
just below Peterhof. Then I was advised not to 
try to see the Grand Duke on that day, as it was 
Saturday. I resolved to go at once to Strelna, 
without regard to official days, as I had long since 
18 251 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

discovered that the only way to do a thing of this 
sort was to do it straightway. I got a fast team, 
and was taken out to the Grand Duke's palace. 

I found the residence situated in the midst of 
an immense forest park, and sentinels guarded 
every avenue of approach. These stopped me at 
every turn, but at every challenge I showed the 
letter to the Grand Duke and told my errand. I 
was passed on and on, until I was inside the palace 
itself. Here I was met by a gentleman in the long 
frock coat the Russians affect, with his breast cov- 
ered with military orders. He offered, as soon 
as I told him my errand, to take the letter to the 
Grand Duke; but I merely said that it was my 
purpose to hand it to him in person. I now began 
to fear that it would require some little time to get 
into the presence of this high dignitary. I ex- 
pected to be put off for several days, and then to 
end up against a secretary or an aide-de-camp, 
who would finally have me meet some one very 
near the Grand Duke, but not the Grand Duke 
himself. 

I was at last shown by this military-looking 
gentleman into a reception room of the most spa- 
cious proportions. I sat down and prepared to 
wait for a secretary or aide-de-camp, when, sud- 
denly, the door flew open, and, with a rapid step, 
a handsome, delicate-looking gentleman advanced 
toward me. I rose, and again went through the 
tiresome explanation that I had a letter for the 

252 



A VISIT TO KUSSIA 



Grand Duke, which I should like to hand to him in 
person, and so on, and so on. I expected to re- 
ceive the reply that this gentleman would be 
greatly pleased to relieve me of the trouble, and 
was prepared to answer rather severely that I 
wished to hand the letter to his Grace myself. 
He said, with a gracious smile, which played like 
a dim light over his pale features, that he would 
see that the Grand Duke received the letter. 
" But,'' I said, " I must hand it to him myself.'' 
" Is it necessary? " he asked, with his faint smile. 
" It is," I replied as firmly as I could. 

He stepped back a little, and said, with a bow, 
" I am the Grand Duke." I almost sank into the 
chair with surprise. As soon as I recovered my 
composure, I handed him the letter, which I now 
felt to be a very small affair for so much cere- 
mony and trouble. 

While I was waiting for the Grand Duke to 
read the letter, two great dogs came into the room, 
from different directions, and immediately began 
fighting. The Grand Duke said something in 
Russian, which showed that he at least knew how 
to speak commandingly. The great beasts, with 
drooping tails, slunk from his presence like 
whipped children. 

The Grand Duke Constantine was a younger 
brother of the Czar, and was a man of many ac- 
complishments. He spoke with ease and grace 
seven languages, and his English was quite 

253 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

as grammatical and exact as my own. The Grand 
Duke, as soon as he had read the letter, called in 
his aide-de-camp, Colonel Greig, and said that the 
colonel would see to it that all my needs were at- 
tended to immediately, and expressed the wish 
that he might see me on my return from Nijnii. 
" I should like to know what you, as an American, 
think of Eussia." 

Colonel Greig took me to the residence of his 
mother, the widow of Admiral Greig of the Eus- 
sian navy, who lived just opposite Kronstadt. 
We were driven over in a troika, or droshky, with 
one horse trotting in the middle and one on 
each side, in full gallop. It was the most de- 
lightfully exhilarating drive I had ever taken, and 
I still think that the troika is the most attractive 
of all vehicles. At the Greigs' I was treated with 
the utmost consideration, and was a guest at a 
banquet the first night I was there. When I came 
to prepare for this function, I remembered that I 
had no change of clothes with me, as I had come 
out from St. Petersburg in a great hurry. 

In this dilemma, I turned to Colonel Greig and 
explained that it was not possible for me to attend 
the banquet as I had no dress clothes with me. He 
looked me over, and replied : " I think we are 
about the same size. Suppose you try one of my 
suits ? " I accepted the offer at once, and found 
that his suit fitted me as well as my own. The 
banquet was a great affair, with a vast concourse 

254 



A VISIT TO RUSSIA 



of " skis," " offs," " neffs," and so on— little tag- 
ends of words by which one may tell a Russian 
name, even if it were possible not to tell it from 
its general appearance and sound without them. 

After a few days at the Greigs', I left for Mos- 
cow, where I was received by Prince Dombriski, 
brother-in-law of the Emperor. The old city of 
Moscow impressed me more than any other city 
of Europe. It seemed to belong to quite another 
world and to a different civilization. There is 
something primitive and prehistoric about it — 
elemental in its somberness and in its grandeur. 
I was astonished to find in the Kremlin a portrait 
of Napoleon at the battle of Borodino. 

In going from the capital to Moscow over the 
straight line of railway, I heard much of the way 
that the Czar Nicholas had built the road. It is 
said that he summoned to him his chief contractor 
and engineer, Carmichael, and asked him to make 
specifications for the line as arranged for between 
the two cities. The Czar confidently expected 
that he was being deceived about all matters of 
this kind, and was prepared for fraud in this en- 
terprise. Carmichael drew up elaborate specifi- 
cations, which Nicholas saw at once were entirely 
too elaborate, and gave abundant room for " pick- 
ings." He turned to Carmichael and asked if the 
specifications were all right. Carmichael assured 
him they were. " All right, then," said Nicholas, 
*^ 1 shall turn them over, just as they are, to Major 

255 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Whistler." The Major was the uncle of the 
famous artist of to-day. Whistler built the road 
on Carmichaers specifications, and made a for- 
tune, which has been the foundation of a half 
dozen family estates — the Winans, Harrison, 
Whistler estates, et al. 

I observed a peculiar effect of the direct 
method of the Czar in building a straight road to 
Moscow. All the big cities and even the prosper- 
ous and important towns had, without exception, 
been left at varying distances from the line of 
railway. At the little stations on the route the 
Eussians would get off and get hot water in samo- 
vars and make tea, each of them carrying a sup- 
ply of tea in bricks, with square loaf sugar in their 
pockets. 

Nijnii Novgorod I found a wonderful city. 
There, on the " Mother " Volga, as the Eussians 
call it, I saw the origin of all the world's fairs and 
expositions, in this great fair, at which the na- 
tions of a world unknown to Europe and America 
assemble for traffic and barter. More than 
100,000,000 rubles, or, roughly, $50,000,000, 
change hands in six weeks. There the traveler, 
who is too indolent or too poor to see the remote 
tribes of the earth, may have all these strange and 
outlandish races come to him, on the banks of the 
Volga. It was a marvelous experience to me, and 
I considered it as well worth a trip around the 
world to see Nijnii Novgorod alone. 

256 



A VISIT TO KUSSIA 



Some time afterward, when I was in England, 
I received a letter from Baron Bruno, the Russian 
Ambassador, enclosing a letter from Colonel 
Greig, the aide-de-camp of the Grand Duke Con- 
stantine. He said that the Grand Duke had 
read my book, Young America Abroad, with inter- 
est. The Grand Duke, he said, was greatly 
pleased with my descriptions of Russia, with my 
exposure of the Crimean fiasco, and with my pre- 
dictions as to the future development and greatness 
of the country. He added that the Russian Gov- 
ernment would like to have me visit the region of 
the Amur, Petropauloffski and Vladivostok, and 
to make a report of the prospects of far-eastern 
Siberia. 

The Government proposed to make all the 
arrangements for me, so that I could travel in 
luxury and leisure ; but I could not then undertake 
so extended an enterprise, besides I have ever 
preferred to follow my own ideas rather than those 
of others. I desired to pursue original lines of in- 
vestigation, to go over new routes of travel and of 
trade, to explore corners of the world that had not 
been worn into paths by the myriad feet of travel- 
ers. I have always felt hampered in trying to 
carry out the suggestions of others. I have found 
that there is but one course for me, if I am to suc- 
ceed, and that is to follow my own counsel. I 
must be myself, untrammeled, unfettered, or I 
fail. If I had gone to Eastern Siberia for the 

257 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Eussian Government, I might have succeeded in 
the way the Government expected ; but the chances, 
I consider, would have been against me. If I had 
gone there at my own motion, I might have 
created a sensation by exploiting that vast and 
magnificent region, which must soon play a tre- 
mendously important part in the history of the 
world. 



258 



CHAPTER XXI 

BUILDING THE FIRST STREET-RAILWAYS IN 

ENGLAND 

1858 

In '58, when I visited Philadelphia on business 
of Queen Maria Cristina, of Spain, I observed the 
network of street-railways in that city, which 
then, perhaps, had the most perfect system of sur- 
face transportation in the world. I was struck with 
the idea of the great convenience these railways 
must be to business men and to all workers, and 
wondered why London, with so many more persons, 
had never had recourse to the street-railway. At 
that time there was not an inch of " tramway," or 
street-railway, in Great Britain, or anywhere out- 
side of New York and Philadelphia. I stored the 
idea up in my mind, intending to utilize it Some 
day, when I returned to England. 

Before undertaking the work of constructing 
street-railways in England, I was called upon to 
do a little financiering for my father-in-law. Colonel 
George T. M. Davis. Colonel Davis came to me 
in London and wished me to assist in organizing 

259 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the Adirondack Eailway in upper New York. He 
had been introduced to Hamilton and Waddell, who 
had a grant from the New York legislature of 
600,000 acres in the Adirondacks; but nothing 
could be done at that time. Later, in '64, I organ- 
ized the Adirondack road, and met General Eose- 
crans and Cheney, of Little Falls, at the Astor 
House, for the purpose of building the railway. I 
subscribed $20,000 for myself and $20,000 for my 
wife, and got a large sum from my friends. A 
large party of us went in carriages from the United 
States Hotel, Saratoga, through the country along 
the proposed route to Lucerne. George Augustus 
Sala, who was visiting this country at the time, was 
with us, also Dr. T. C Durant, president of the 
Credit Mobilier, and J. S. T. Stranahan, of Brook- 
lyn. This was the beginning of the Adirondack road, 
of which Colonel Davis was the president when he 
died in '88. My plan was to build the road through 
the entire forest to Ogdensburg, but it was never 
carried out. This was four decades before the 
millionaire colonists began flocking in there, the 
Huntingtons, Astors, Webbs, Eockefellers, Wood- 
ruffs, Durant s, et al. 

My first efforts in introducing street-railways 
in England were made in Liverpool. I chose this 
city because I had been long associated with it and 
because, as it was the leading seaport of the world, 
I had a false idea that it was progressive. But I 
was soon set right as to this estimate of Liverpool. 

260 



STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 

I recalled, in the hour of discouragement, the great 
difficulty I had had years before, in '50, in get- 
ting the municipal government to permit us to 
have lights and fire on the docks at night, in order 
to facilitate the handling of the very traffic that 
was the basis of the city's prosperity. Now, 
when I proposed the laying of a street-railway, I 
found the leading men of the city just as narrow 
and just as hopelessly behind the times as they 
had been in the matter of improving shipping 
facilities. They would not consider the proposi- 
tion at all. 

But this did not stop my efforts nor dampen my 
ardor. I felt that the plan would succeed some- 
where in England, and I began to look about to 
see where the best chances of success might be 
found. All through the year '58 and into '59 I 
was at work upon my original plan. I had made 
every possible arrangement for the immediate 
construction of a railway, if I could only get some 
municipality to grant the necessary permission. 

Finally, it occurred to me that the man I 
wanted was John Laird, the progressive and 
energetic ship-builder, the man who afterward 
built the Alabama and other Confederate craft, 
and who was at the time chairman of the Commis- 
sioners of Birkenhead, just across the Mersey 
opposite Liverpool. Surely, thought I, here is a 
man with enterprise enough to appreciate this 
thing, which means so much for the working peo- 

261 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

pie and all business men. So I went to Mr. Laird, 
and after a long conference with him, I made a 
formal request to the Commissioners for permis- 
sion to construct a surface railway, or "tram- 
way," as it is called in England. My proposition 
was to lay a track four miles long, running out to 
the Birkenhead Park. I offered to lay the road at 
my own expense, to pave a certain proportion of 
the streets through which the line passed, and to 
charge fares lower than those then charged by the 
omnibuses. If the line did not then satisfy the city 
authorities, I was to remove it at my own expense 
and to place all the streets affected in as good 
order as when the road was begun. 

I found Mr. Laird as liberal-minded as I had ex- 
pected, and with his influence, the Board of Com- 
missioners consented to let me make the experiment. 
I went to work at once, and the road was pushed 
through with great despatch. I felt that it ought 
to get into operation before the 'buses and other 
transportation companies stirred up too much 
opposition. As soon as the working people found 
how comfortable and cheap the new mode of con- 
veyance was, I felt sure they would stand up for 
it so strongly as to defeat the efforts of the omni- 
bus men to tear up the line. 

The "tramway" proved a success from the 
start, and became as popular as I had expected. 
It was crowded with passengers at all hours of 
the day. The road is there to-day; and I learned 

262 



STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 

a curious thing in connection with the line only 
recently. Twelve years ago the cashier of the 
restaurant in the Mills Hotel No. 1, Mr. Bryan, 
was the manager of the street-railway I had built 
in Birkenhead forty- two years ago. 

Another incident of this period I should record 
here. I invited to Birkenhead most of the lead- 
ing journalists and writers of London, having in 
view, of course, an intended invasion of the 
great metropolis. While these men were together 
I suggested the organization of a literary club, 
and this suggestion was the germ from which 
grew the Savage Club of London. My speech at 
the opening of the first street-railway in the 
Old World will appear in my forthcoming book 
of speeches. 

As soon as I had completed my work in Bir- 
kenhead, I went to London, and opened a cam- 
paign for " tramways " in that metropolis of 
4,000,000 people. It was a complex business from 
the first, and I had to make a study of the govern- 
ment and the conditions, and, above all, of the 
prejudices of citizens. The first step was to 
apply to every parish, for the parish there is our 
ward, and something more, for it has a far greater 
measure of home rule. Each parish had to grant 
permission for any tramway that was to invade 
its ancient and sacred precincts. 

The greatest difficulty was the one I had most 
dreaded from the start — the opposition of the 'bus 

263 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

men. There are, or were at that time, 6,000 omni- 
buses in the streets of London, and in every one 
of the drivers, and in every one who was inter- 
ested in the profits of the business, my tramway 
project had an unrelenting foe. I found that the 
influence of these men was tremendous, because 
they reached the masses of the people in a way 
that I could never hope to do. Their efforts were 
unremitting. They worked upon the different 
parish governments, upon the people at large, 
upon the municipal government, and upon Parlia- 
ment itself. I believe they had sufficient influ- 
ence to have carried the war even into the cabinet 
and to the throne. 

However, as I shall soon relate, the opposition 
of the 'buses did not prove to be as terrible in the 
end as I had feared. The heaviest blows came 
from a higher source. The " people," in Eng- 
land, as elsewhere, seem very powerful at first, in 
the beginnings of all enterprises. To oppose 
them would seem to be inviting destruction. But 
in the end it is found that the real power is lodged 
elsewhere, and whenever this real power wants a 
thing done, the "people" do not exist. The fic- 
tion that they do exist disappears at once in the 
clear atmosphere of " exigency." 

The first of these real powers that I had to 
attack was the Metropolitan Board of Aldermen. 
I appeared before the board with a carefully pre- 
pared model of the tramways I proposed. It was 

264 



STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 

a sort of public hearing, and I was very closely 
questioned about the plans of operating the road, 
the effect its presence in the narrow streets would 
have in interfering with traffic, the danger of 
accidents, and so on. There was present a noble 
lord who, I saw, was fighting desperately against 
the project. He eyed me closely and made sharp 
interrogations. When he wished to be particu- 
larly effective, as is the manner of Englishmen of 
his class, he would drop his monocle, then read- 
just it carefully, with many writhings and twist- 
ings of his eyebrows, and, when the single glass 
was properly adjusted, half close the other eye 
and concentrate the full blaze of the monocle upon 
his victim. If the victim survives this, so much 
the worse for him, for he will then be subjected to 
a long drawl and to " hems " and " haws " that 
would shatter the composure of a Philadelphia 
lawyer. 

We soon took up the problem of laying the 
tramway up Ludgate Hill, where the street is ex- 
ceedingly narrow. His lordship fixed me with his 
glittering monocle. I saw from which direction the 
firing would come. After readjusting his monocle, 
so as to get the range better, he said : 

" May I — ah — ask a question, Mr. — ah — 
Train?" ^Vhen an Englishman wants to be sar- 
castic, and ironical, and cutting, he finds the means 
readiest to his mind in a pretended forgetting of 
your name. 

265 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" That is what I am here for, my lord," I re- 
plied, as graciously as possible. 

"You know, of course, how very narrow is 
Ludgate Hill. Suppose that when I go down to 
the Mansion House in my carriage, one of my 
horses should slip on your d — d rail, and break his, 
leg — ^would you pay for the horse ? " 

This produced a sensation, for the English 
love a lord even more than we plain Americans 
do. As soon as the stir had ceased, I replied, in 
a voice that carried to the ends of the hall: 

" My lord, if you could convince me that your 
d — d old horse would not have fallen if the rail 
had not been there, I certainly should pay for it." 
This retort caught the audience so happily that 
the tide swept around my way, to the discomfi- 
ture of the noble lord. The hearing resulted in my 
obtaining permission to lay a tramway from the 
Marble Arch at Oxford Street and from Hyde 
Park to Bayswater, a distance of one or two miles. 

I soon built other lines, also : one from Victoria 
Station to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of 
Parliament, and another from Westminster Bridge 
to Kennington Gate on the way to Clapham. These 
were constructed on my patent of a half-inch 
flange. 

The omnibuses, defeated in this part of the 
fighting, resorted to peculiar but effective tac- 
tics. As soon as I laid a portion of my tracks — 
which was done upon the same terms under which 

266 



STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 

I had put down the line in Birkenhead — the 'bus 
drivers tried in every possible way to wreck their 
vehicles on the rails. They would drive across 
again and again and take the rails in the most 
reckless way, in order to catch and twist their 
wheels. They were very often successful, and 
there were many accidents of this sort. The ex- 
citement increased greatly with every foot of 
track laid down. But the people, as in Birken- 
head, were tremendously in favor of the tramway. 
It was such a convenience to them that they sided 
with me in the fight. The 'bus drivers and com- 
panies and the aristocracy were against me — the 
one because my trams interfered with their busi- 
ness, the other because they owned their private 
conveyances, and did not like to drive across the 
rails. I dressed conductors and drivers in the uni- 
form of volunteers, to which many soldiers ob- 
jected. In the meanwhile the cars were crowded 
with passengers at all hours, there being through- 
out the day a rush such as is seen in New York 
only in what we call the " rush hours." 

In all this excitement and press of travel, acci- 
dents were, of course, unavoidable. I dreaded 
one, as I felt it would be the crucial point. It 
might turn against me the popular feeling, now so 
strongly setting in my direction, for the " mob " 
(so called) of London is fully as excitable and as 
ungovernable as the "mob" of Paris, and its 
prejudices are more deeply intrenched. Finally, 
19 267 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

the dreaded accident came. A boy was killed, and 
I was arrested for manslaughter. 

In order to appease public feeling, I paid the 
expenses of the boy's funeral, and did everything 
that could possibly be done to pay, in a material 
way, for his death. The accident was entirely un- 
avoidable, and the tramway was not responsible 
for it, but there was a great deal of feeling, 
chiefly due to the agitation of the 'bus drivers. 
Sir John Villiers Shelley, member of Parliament, 
a relative of the poet, who was chairman of the 
Metropolitan Board of Works and the representa- 
tive of the omnibus people, led the fight against 
me. We had a terrific struggle. The bill to au- 
thorize the tramways had gone to Parliament, and 
this was now defeated by a few votes. I had six 
of the ablest lawyers of England to represent 
me (through Baxter, Rose & Norton, solicitors), 
but the influence of the 'bus men, aided by the sen- 
timent in certain quarters against me on account 
of my speeches in favor of the American Union, 
was too strong for me, and I had to abandon the 
fight in London. 

I then went to the Potteries in Staffordshire, 
and there, after renewing the same kind of fight- 
ing that I had had in London, in every new town I 
undertook to lay railways in, I succeeded in build- 
ing seven miles of track through the crockery- 
making country. Those tracks are there to-day. 

My failure in London, which was to have been 
268 



STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 

expected, must be set off by these successes in 
Birkenhead and in Staffordshire. I am entitled 
to the credit of laying the first street-railways in 
England, having to overcome the most formidable 
of all the enemies of progress — British prejudice. 
I afterward went to Darlington, where Stephen- 
son had built his first railway, from Stockton to 
Darlington, in '29, the year of my birth, and I con- 
structed a tramway there to connect the two steam 
railways through that town. 

My life, therefore, spans the entire railway 
building of the world. The first railway was 
built the year I was born, and since that time, in a 
space of seventy-three years, more than 200,000 
miles of railway have been constructed in the 
United States alone. In much of this great work 
I have had some share. I suggested the railway 
that connects Melbourne with its port, and mapped 
out the present railway system in Australia thirty- 
nine years ago ; I organized the line that connects 
the Eastern States with the great Middle West — 
the Atlantic and Great Western Railway; and I 
organized and built the first railway that pierced 
the great American desert, and brought the At- 
lantic and Pacific coasts into close touch and led to 
the development of the far West. 

I may mention here, also, that I built a street- 
railway in Geneva, Switzerland, which is still in 
use; and one in Copenhagen, which proved that 
there was at least something sound in " the state 

269 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of Denmark." Other railways, as in Sydney and 
Melbourne, Australia, suggested by me, have been 
changed from horse to trolley lines. I also sug- 
gested the road in Bombay, India, which was the 
first railway in all Asia, now extended. 

It may be of interest to record that when I be- 
gan building street-railways, I sent to the United 
States and got the plans of the Philadelphia roads 
and of the New York Third Avenue line. It was 
therefore upon the models of American roads 
that these foreign railways were constructed. 

It is sometimes said that it is remarkable that 
little is known of my connection with these great 
enterprises — for they were great, and epoch-mak- 
ing. But my achievements in England, in the 
pioneer work of building street-railways, is a mat- 
ter of recorded history. An account of my work 
there will be found in a book by Dr. Albert Shaw, 
editor of the Review of Reviews, Municipal Gov- 
ernment in Great Britain, as well as in other 
books that deal with the industrial life of the 
period. 



270 



CHAPTER XXII 

ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR — BLOCKADE RUN- 
NING 

I HAVE referred already to the antagonism 
felt toward me in certain English quarters because 
of my speeches in favor of the Federal American 
Union in the hour of its danger. Love of country 
was always stronger in me than love of money, 
and I let slip no opportunity to defend the cause 
of the Union and to prove to the English of the 
upper classes that they were mistaken in suppos- 
ing that the Confederacy could succeed. Those 
who were not in England at this period, when the 
South was in the first flush of its success, and when 
it seemed likely that England and France would 
go to the assistance of the South, merely to 
strengthen themselves by weakening the power of 
the United States, can not appreciate the extent 
or the power of British sympathy for the Con- 
federacy. The element in England that took sides 
with the South was tremendously influential. I 
had already felt its power in a personal way 
through the defeat of my street-railway projects. 

271 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

As soon as I observed the trend of British 
opinion, I went into public halls and spoke in 
favor of the Union, and tried to show that right 
and might were both on the side of the North, and 
that, no matter how many successes the South 
might win in the beginning of the war, it would 
inevitably be crushed beneath the weight of the 
rest of the country. I did not confine myself to 
speeches of this sort. I attacked the men who 
were trading on the war by sending blockade run- 
ners into Southern ports in violation of the rules 
of war. And so I was in some relation with Lord 
John Russell on the one hand and Emperor Louis 
Napoleon on the other, in the critical days of the 
Mason-Slidell affair and the discussion of "bel- 
ligerent rights " of the South. 

Before taking part in this desperate effort to 
stem the tide of British opinion, and to defeat the 
efforts of British traders to make money by sell- 
ing merchandise to the South contraband of war, I 
placed my wife and children on board a steamer 
for New York, in order to remove them from 
troubled scenes. This fight was to cost me the op- 
portunity of making a fortune of perhaps $5,000,- 
000, by upsetting my street-railway projects. 

I may mention here that in '58, during the Ital- 
ian war, I bought the London Morning Chronicle 
for the French Emperor, paying $10,000 for it, 
and putting Thornton Hunt, son of Leigh Hunt, 
in editorial charge, at a salary of $2,000 a year. 

272 



ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR 

It was a daily paper ; and as the Emperor wanted 
a weekly also, I arranged for him the purchase of 
the London Spectator at the same price, and put 
in Townsend (I think that was the name) as 
editor, at a salary of $2,000 a year. When the war 
was over, these papers of course passed out of 
our hands, and the Chronicle made a most savage 
attack on me in the tramway discussion, taking 
the part of the omnibus drivers. It again at- 
tacked me for my exposure of blockade running 
from British ports. I had given the names of 
the men interested, the marks of the cargoes, and 
the destination of the shipments, in a letter that I 
wrote to the New York Herald. These men 
thought they had assassinated the United States 
Republic. 

The feeling against me was so intense at one 
time that I anticipated an attempt to kill me. 
Strong influences were brought to bear upon me 
to stop a paper that I had established in London, 
with my private secretary, George Pickering 
Bemis, as manager, for the purpose of disseminat- 
ing correct news and views about the civil war. 
Secretary Seward, by the way, sent $100, through 
his private secretary, Mr. J. C. Derby (who was 
afterward connected with the house of D. Apple- 
ton and Company, and wrote his recollections un- 
der the title. Fifty Years Among Authors, Books, 
and Publishers), to assist in keeping up this jour- 
nal. The intense strain wore upon me to such an 

273 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

extent that I had an attack of insomnia, and almost 
lost my senses at times. I would not go armed, 
but relied for defense upon a small cane that I 
carried under my arm, so grasped by the end in 
front as to enable me to whirl it about instantly 
in case I should be attacked from the rear. 

In August, '62, 1 observed that a vessel called the 
Mavrockadatis was acting suspiciously, and came 
to the conclusion that she was a blockade runner. 
I believed that she was loaded with supplies for 
the Confederates, and that as soon as she was clear 
at sea she would make for a Southern port or for 
some rendezvous with a Confederate ship. I de- 
termined to frustrate this design, and took pas- 
sage on her for St. John's, Newfoundland, which 
I supposed was only her ostensible destination. 
Of course, I registered under an assumed name, 
taking the name " Oliver " for the occasion. 

As it turned out, I was wrong. The vessel 
kept on her course as represented, and we arrived 
at St. John's, Newfoundland, instead of at a South- 
ern port. This broke up my program, as I had in- 
tended, immediately upon reaching a Southern 
port, to go direct to Kichmond and see if anything 
could be done to end the war. As I may not have 
occasion again to refer to this plan, which I had 
had in mind for some time, I shall speak of it here. 
I had arranged with the President and with Mr. 
Seward to go to Kichmond to see what could be 
done. 

274 



ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR 

My idea was that the Southern leaders were in 
complete ignorance of the power and resources of 
the North; they had fancied, because of the great 
military reputation of Southern soldiers, that it 
would be comparatively easy to beat Northern 
troops in the field ; and that, in the last event, Eng- 
land and France would come to their assistance. 
I felt confident of convincing Jefferson Davis and 
other Southern leaders that all these views were 
erroneous. I thought it would be a simple thing 
to prove that they could not count on the assist- 
ance of either England or France, as these two na- 
tions would not unite, and neither would undertake 
the task alone. I also thought I could give them 
such evidence of the great resources of the North, 
both in men and means, that they would recognize 
the uselessness of the struggle. Another view I 
had in mind was that I could impress the Southern- 
ers with the suggestion that, in the event of their 
abandoning the contest at that stage, they could 
obtain far better terms than the victorious North 
would be content to offer after a long and harrow- 
ing war. But this was not to be. Stanton heard 
of our plans, and sent Montgomery Blair to nego- 
tiate with the Southern leaders, with what result 
is too well known. 

I landed in Newfoundland, instead of in the 
South, as I have said, with all my immediate plans 
thwarted. But I took up the course of my life 
exactly at the point where I stood. I was in New- 

275 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

foundland just one day, and I wrote a history of 
that Crown Colony from the information I 
gleaned in this brief visit. I shall republish it 
some day. I observed in St. John's, as I have ob- 
served elsewhere, that people are fashioned by 
their occupations. These people were physicall^i 
the creation of fisheries. I noted the tomcod mar- 
ried to the hake, and the shark wedded to the 
swordfish. The fish of the sea, which they ate 
and upon which they lived and had their being, 
were all represented in their features, from the 
sardine to the sperm whale. 

From St. John's, Newfoundland, I went to 
Boston, by way of St. Johns, New Brunswick, 
stopping at Portland, Maine, for a brief visit. 
At Portland I was met by B. F. Guild on be- 
half of Curtis Guild, owner of the Boston Com- 
mercial Bulletin, which had just been established. 
Guild published my Union speeches, and must 
have spent $1,000 a week — the Bulletin was a 
weekly paper — in advertising them and my other 
writings. I published my History of Newfound- 
land in his paper, receiving for it $10 a column, 
the only pay I have ever received from a news- 
paper or other periodical for my work. I saw 
recently a notice of the death of B. F. Guild, 
at the age of eighty-nine. I had no idea he was 
so old. 

I found that I had returned to my country 
the most popular American in public life. I was 

276 



ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR 

greeted everywhere by vast concourses of people, 
who cheered me and demanded speeches about the 
situation in England and my experiences there. 
At Boston I was met by a tremendous gathering, 
and it looked like a procession as we went up 
State Street to the Revere House. I was placed 
in the rooms that had been occupied by the Prince 
of Wales, now King Edward, on his visit to Bos- 
ton two years before. 

I was not long in Boston before I got into 
trouble by trying to enlighten the people with re- 
gard to the war. There was a great assemblage 
in Faneuil Hall, where Sumner was to speak, and 
I went there to see what was going on. Sumner 
was not a very effective speaker before mixed 
audiences, and could not have stood up for twenty 
minutes in the halls of London, where the greatest 
freedom of debate is indulged in, and where every 
speaker must be prepared to answer quickly and 
to the point any question that may be hurled at 
him, or to reply with sharpness and point to any 
retort that may come from the crowd that faces 
him. 

I was very much astonished, therefore, to hear 
Sumner challenge any one in the audience to con- 
fute his arguments. I knew, of course, that the 
gantlet thus lightly thrown down was a mere ora- 
torical figure, but in England it would have been 
taken up at once, and Sumner would have been 
routed. The temptation was too much for me. I 

277 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

rose, to the apparent astoiiisliment and embarrass- 
ment of the orator and of the committee on the 
platform, and said : " Mr. Sumner, when you 
have finished, I should like to speak a word." The 
cheering that greeted my acceptance of the gaily- 
flung challenge was cordial. 

As soon as Sumner had finished I climbed 
to the platform. There I had the greatest diffi- 
culty with the committee, which seemed deter- 
mined to suppress any attempt to reply to the 
hero and god of the upper classes in Boston. The 
moment I began to talk the committee signaled to 
the band, and the music drowned my voice. When 
the band stopped I started again, but the com- 
mittee endeavored to stop me. I acted as my own 
policeman and cleared the platform, when 
another rush was made upon me, and all went 
tumbling from the stage. I was then arrested and 
taken to the City Hall. The crowd seemed de- 
cidedly with me, although the utmost it knew as to 
my sentiments was that I was opposed to making 
instant abolition of slavery a condition precedent 
to putting an end to the war (that is, on Lincoln's 
platform. Union, with or without slavery). 

In a few minutes there was a crowd of some 
thousands of people about the City Hall demand- 
ing loudly that I be set at liberty. I quieted the 
people by sending word to them that I was pre- 
paring a proclamation to the American people. 
This proclamation, entitled " God Save the Peo- 

278 



ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR 

pie," was published by Guild in the Bulletin — 
and I should like to get a copy of it, as I have 
lost my own. This arrest did not interfere with 
me very much. 

I made a contract with Guild to lecture in the 
North and West, and my first lecture was given 
in the Academy of Music, New York. The gen- 
eral subject was the abolition question, as it re- 
lated to the war between the States. At this meet- 
ing Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, was made chair- 
man, but the audience did not like that, and a big 
cabbage was thrown to the stage from the gallery. 
I then took charge of the meeting myself, and 
walking to the edge of the stage, said : " I see 
that you do not like Mr. Clay ; but he should have 
a fair chance. If Mr. Guild will arrange for a 
meeting at Cooper Institute to-morrow night, I 
will debate with Mr. Clay, and you can then fire at 
me cabbages or gold dollars, as you like. I pro- 
pose the following subject for the discussion: 
American Slavery as a Stepping-stone from Afri- 
can Barbarism to Christian Civilization; hence, it 
is a Divine Institution." Mr. Clay accepted. 

The next evening, at Cooper Institute, there 
was a large audience that packed the hall from 
door to stage ; $1,300 were taken at the box-office. 
The papers on the following morning gave from 
two to four columns of the discussion, and the 
London Times considered it sufficiently important, 
even to Englishmen, to give a long account and 

279 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

editorial comments. It said tliat the honors of 
the debate had been with me, and gave a specimen 
of my repartee, which, it said, had swept Mr. Clay; 
oif his feet. 

Mr. Clay had referred in his speech to an in- 
terview he had had with President Lincoln, who 
was then hesitating as to issuing the Proclamation 
of Emancipation. Mr. Clay said, "I told the 
President that I would not flesh my sword in the 
defense of Washington unless he issued a procla- 
mation freeing the slaves." My reply was : " It 
is fair to assume that, in order to make Major- 
General Cassius M. Clay flesh his sword, the 
President will issue the proclamation." There 
was loud laughter at this. The President did 
issue his proclamation three months after this. 

I received a postal card the other day from 
Clay, who is now a nonogenarian, in his armed 
castle in Kentucky. 

I was in Washington after this debate, which 
occurred in September, '62, and was warmly re- 
ceived by the President and members of his cabi- 
net. I had heard very much, of course, about the 
freedom of speech of Mr. Lincoln, and was not, 
therefore, astonished to hear him relate several 
characteristic anecdotes. In fact, three of the most 
prominent men in the United States at that time 
were striving to outdo one another in jests — the 
President, Senator Nesmyth of Oregon, and 
Senator Nye. 

280 



ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR 

Mr. Seward invited me to a dinner at his resi- 
dence, the historic house where later the assassin 
tried to kill him, where General Sickles killed Philip 
Barton Key, and which in more recent years was 
occupied by James G. Blaine. Most of the members 
of the cabinet were present. I was asked to describe 
some of the scenes of my recent travels, and told 
about Chinese dinners, to their great amusement. 
Afterward I told them a story then current about 
Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist. Phillips was 
once in Charleston, South Carolina, and returned 
late to dinner at his hotel. As he approached the 
door, it was held open by a negro slave. Phillips 
said haughtily that he had never permitted a 
slave to wait on him, and that he would not do so 
now. " How long have you been a slave? " asked 
Mr. Phillips. The negro replied : " I ain*t got no 
time to talk erbout dat now, wid only five minits 
fur dinner." Mr. Phillips told the slave to leave 
the room, that he would not let him serve him at 
the table ; he would wait on himself. " I cain't 
do dat, suh ; I is 'sponsible for de silber on de table, 
suli!" 

Loud laughter greeted this story. In the very 
midst of the uproar the door was burst open, 
and Secretary Stanton appeared, his face white 
with emotion. In a choking voice, that was scarcely 
audible and would not have been heard had not 
every nerve in our bodies been strained to catch 
the momentous words we expected, he said : " A 

281 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

battle is raging at Antietam! Ten thousand men 
have been killed, and the rebels are now probably; 
marching on Washington ! " 

There was a hush, and we told no more stories 
that night. It is remarkable that almost all the 
great battles hung long in the scales of victory. 
Neither side knew whether it had won until some 
time after the fighting had ceased. It was so at 
Antietam, and had been so in the case of Bull Run 
or Manassas. The true tidings came in slowly. 

I took no part in the war on the battlefield, be- 
cause as soon as I looked into the causes of the 
war and its continuance, I saw that it was a con- 
tract war. I came back to this country fully ex- 
pecting to serve. I had been assured of a high 
commission; but could not conscientiously take 
part in a struggle in which thousands of lives were 
being sacrificed to greed. Such was my honest 
belief, and such was my course. 



282 



CHAPTER XXIII 

BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY 

1862-1870 

When the Englishmen tore up my street-rail- 
ways in England, I made a speech in which I told 
them I would build a railway across the Rocky 
Mountains and the Great American Desert which 
would ruin the old trade routes across Egypt to 
China and Japan. I pointed out then that this 
route would be far shorter in time than the old 
route, and that Europe would soon be traversing 
America to reach the Orient. This was no new 
idea, sprung at the moment in a feeling of resent- 
ment. I had suggested this route across America 
ten years earlier, at Melbourne, Australia. 

New York, then as now, we Americans re- 
garded as the starting point of all great enter- 
prises, and to New York I came. I called at once 
upon leaders in the world of finance — Commodore 
Vanderbilt, Commodore Garrison, William B. 
Astor, Moses H. Grinnell, Marshall 0. Roberts, 
and others, and frankly told them of my plans. 
One of them said to me : 

" Train, you have reputation enough now. 
20 283 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



Why do something that will mar it? You are 
known all over the world as the Clipper-Ship 
King. This is enough glory for one man. If you 
attempt to build a railway across the desert and 
over the Rocky Mountains, the world will call you 
a lunatic." 

And this was all that I received from these gen- 
tlemen ! Not a word of encouragement, not a cent 
of contributed funds — only the warning that the 
world, like themselves, would call me a madman. 

Unaffected by this cold reception, I kept 
steadily on with my task, and proceeded to organ- 
ize the great railway. Congress granted the 
necessary charter in '62. It authorized the build- 
ing of a road from the Missouri River to Cali- 
fornia, with an issue of $100,000,000 of stock and 
$50,000,000 of bonds — to be issued in sections, the 
ja.rst section to be at the rate of $16,000 a mile; 
and the last at $48,000 a mile, with 20,000,000 
acres of land in alternate sections ; and $2,000,000 
to be subscribed, ten per centum to be paid into 
the State treasury at Albany. 

My friends in Boston took the stock, but I failed 
to get the cash to go ahead with the road in Phil- 
adelphia, Baltimore, and New York. At this point, 
when matters looked a little dark, an idea occurred 
to me that cleared the sky. It made the construc- 
tion of the great line a certainty. In Paris, a few 
years before, I had been much interested in new 
methods of finance as devised by the brothers 

284 



BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC 

Emile and Isaac Perrere. These shrewd and 
ingenious men, finding that old methods could 
not be used to meet many demands of modern 
times, invented entirely new ones which they or- 
ganized into two systems known as the Credit 
Mobilier and the Credit Foncier — or systems of 
credit based on personal property and land. The 
French Government had supported these systems 
of the Perreres, and Baron Haussmann had re- 
sorted to them in his great undertaking in rebuild- 
ing and remodeling the French capital, making it 
the most beautiful city of the world. I deter- 
mined upon introducing this new style of finance 
into this country. 

I found that a bill had been passed in Pennsyl- 
vania in ^59, for Duff Green, granting authority 
for the organization of the " Pennsylvania Fiscal 
Agency," which, on examination, I saw could be 
used for my purpose. I bought this charter for 
$25,000. The bill had been " engineered " through 
the Pennsylvania legislature by a man named Hall, 
and others of the Philadelphia Custom-House. In 
order to make it suitable for our uses, I wanted 
its title changed, and asked to have the legislature 
change the title to " Credit Mobilier of America." 
The matter went through without trouble, and I 
paid $500 for having this done. When I happened 
to mention to William H. Harding, of the Phila- 
delphia Inquirer, that it had cost me $500 to have 
the title of the charter altered, he told me he could 

285 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

have had it done for $50. I did not know as much 
of the ways of legislation in Pennsylvania then as 
I did later. The sum I paid for the charter was 
made up from $5,000 cash and $20,000 of the bonds 
of the Credit Mobilier. I was to have $50,000 for 
organizing the company. I think it worth while 
to call attention here to the fact that this was the 
first so-called " Trust " organized in this country. 
Having failed to raise the money elsewhere, I 
went to Boston, and there succeeded in launching 
the enterprise. My own subscription of $150,000 
was the pint of water that started the great wheel 
of the machinery. I give here — for it is a matter 
of historic interest, since the building of this road 
marked the opening of a new era in the United 
States — the list of the subscribers who were my 
copartners in the undertaking: 

Lombard and friends $100,000 

Cakes and Oliver Ames 200,000 

Sidney Dillon $100,000 

Cyrus H. McCormick 100,000 

Ben Holliday 100,000 

John Duff 100,000 400, 000 

Glidden & Williams 50,000 

Joseph Nickerson 100,000 

Fred Nickerson 50,000 

Baker & Morrill 50,000 

Samuel Hooper and Dexter 50,000 

Price Crowell 25,000 

Bardwell and Otis Norcross 75,000 400,000 

Williams & Guion 50,000 

William H. Macv 25,000 

H. S. McComb, Wilmington, Del 75,000 

George Francis Train, through Colonel George 

T. M. DaTis, trustee for my wife and children 150.000 800.000 

$1,400,000 
286 



BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC 

I had offered an interest in the road to old and 
well-established merchants of New York and other 
cities — the Grays, the Goodhues, the Aspinwalls, 
the Howlands, the Grinnells, the Marshalls, and 
Davis, Brooks & Company; and even to some 
of the new men, like Henry Clews — agreeing to put 
them in " on the ground floor," if I may use an 
expression from the lesser world of finance. But 
they were afraid. It was too big. Only two of 
them, William H. Macy and William H. Guion, 
would take any stock. 

There was a meeting of the stockholders in 
Gibson^s office in Wall Street, for the purpose of 
electing a board of directors. By this time the 
importance of the road had become recognized, 
and there was an active desire on the part of the 
chiefs of the trunk lines leading to the West to ob- 
tain control of the charter. They had their repre- 
sentatives there, and I saw from the first that an 
attempt would be made to capture the Union 
Pacific Railway as a trophy of one of these power- 
ful Eastern lines. Fortunately, as I perfectly 
well knew, they were not quite powerful enough, 
in the circumstance, even with a united front, to 
accomplish their purposes. 

William B. Ogden was in the chair, and a hasty 
calculation convinced me that probably $200,000,000 
were represented by the men gathered in the little 
office. Of the great trunk lines represented I can 
recall now the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsyl- 

287 



MY LIFE m MANY STATES 

vania, and the New York Central. It was from 
the forces of the last that the lightning came. 

As soon as the meeting had been called to 
order, and the purpose of it stated by. the chair, a 
gentleman arose and began speaking in a wheezy, 
squeaky voice. But he had a way of saying what 
he wanted, and of saying it shrewdly, adroitly, 
and very effectively. I could see that he was 
accustomed to win in the Shakespearian way — " by 
indirections find directions out." He said that as 
everything was ready for the election of a board, 
he would suggest that the chair should appoint a 
committee of five which should then name a board 
of thirty members. I saw that this was an adroit 
move to put one of these big roads in control of 
the committee and, of course, in control of the 
Union Pacific. The chair immediately named five 
men, three of whom were representatives of the 
New York Central. 

I turned to a gentleman sitting next me and 
asked who was the wheezy-voiced man who had 
just taken his seat. " That is Samuel J. Tilden," 
said he. 

Matters now went as I had foreseen. Of 
course, the three New York Central men on the 
committee named a New York Central board of 
directors. They thought they had quietly and 
effectively bagged the game. But I held in my 
pocket the power that could overturn all their 
schemes. In fact I had offered the presidency of 

288 



BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC 

the road to Moses Taylor, founder of the City 
National Bank, now controlled by Mr. Stillman, 
and to A. A. Low, father of the present Mayor of 
New York. But both had laughed at me, think- 
ing it absurd that I should presume to have so 
much power. I then made up my own list of offi- 
cers, and named John A. Dix as president, and 
John J. Cisco as treasurer. Afterward I made 
a short speech, in which I said that I held the con- 
trol of the road in my hands. 

The vote was called for by the chair, and out 
of the $2,000,000 of stock represented, the New 
York Central influence cast $300,000 and I the vote 
of $1,700,000. This completely surprised those 
present, and they left the office as rats fly from a 
sinking ship. I was indignant, and shouted: 
" You stand on the corners of Wall Street again 
and call me a ^ damned Copperhead ' ; but don't 
forget that I kicked $200,000,000 worth of you 
into the street I " And that is the reason why they 
called me " crazy " ! 

I went out West in the autumn of '63 to break 
ground for the first mile of railway track west of 
the Missouri river. None of the directors was 
with me; I was entirely alone. I made a speech 
at Omaha in which I predicted that the road would 
be completed by '70, and in which I forecast the 
great development of Omaha and the Northwest. 
This speech was printed all over the world, and I 
was denounced as a madman and a visionary. I 

289 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

had, every one said, prophesied the impossible. 
And yet every word of that speech was true, both 
as to its facts and as to its prophecies. I give 
here a few extracts from it, as it was published in 
the Omaha Republican, December 3, '63, and as 
it has been republished in that paper and others 
many times since: 

America is the stage, the world is the audience of to-day. 
While one act of the drama represents the booming of the cannon 
on the Rapidan, the Cumberland, and the Rio Grande, sounding 
the death-knell of rebellious war, the next scene records the boom- 
ing of cannon on both sides of the Missouri to celebrate the 
grandest work of peace that ever attracted the energies of man. 
The great Pacific Railway is commenced, and if you knew the man 
who has hold of the affair as well as I do, no doubt would ever 
arise as to its speedy completion. The President shows his good 
judgment in locating the road where the Almighty placed the 
signal station, at the entrance of a garden seven hundred miles in 
length and twenty broad. 

Before the first century of the nation's birth, we may see in the 
New York depot some strange Pacific railway notice. 

^^ European passengers for Japan will please take the night train. 

*^'' Passengers for China this way. 

*^ African and Asiatic freight must he distinctly marked: For 
Peking via San Francisco,'''' 

Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions 
of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years. 

I had predicted that the railway would be com- 
pleted in 70. On May 10, '69, the " golden spike " 
was driven at Ogden, Utah. Among the papers 
throughout the world that had ridiculed me as 
being mad or visionary because of my speech at 
Omaha in *63, was the Hongkong Press, which said 

290 



BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC 

that it was generally thought in China during my 
visit there in '55-56 that I was a little '^ off," and 
that this speech, which predicted a railway across 
the Rocky Mountains, clearly proved that I was 
both visionary and mad. On my journey around 
the world in 70, after the completion of the Union 
Pacific Railway, I stepped into the office of the 
Hongkong paper and asked for the editor. When 
he came out, I asked him to show me the file of his 
paper containing my Omaha speech. He brought 
it out, and we turned to the column. "Do you 
know Train? " he asked me. " Why, I am Train," 
I said, " and it seems that you did not know me in 
Hongkong in '55-56. I have just come through 
the Rocky Mountains over that road." 

The tremendous importance of the Union 
Pacific Railway is now too well known to need any 
further comment here from me. It is enough to 
say that it was through my suggestion and through 
my plans and energy that this mighty highway 
across the continent, breaking up the old trade 
routes of the world, and turning the tide of com- 
merce from its ancient eastern tracks across the 
wide expanse of the American continent, was cre- 
ated. 

Note. — Albert D. Richardson in his once famous book Beyond 
the Mississippi, writing of the development of Omaha and the 
Northwest, due to the building of the Union Pacific Railway, says: 
" Here was George Francis Train, at the head of a great company 
called the Credit Foncier, organized for dealing in lands and stocks 
for building cities along the railway from the Missouri to Salt Lake. 
This corporation had been clothed bv the Nebraska legislature with 

291 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

nearly every power imaginable, save that of reconstructing the late 
rebel States. It was erecting neat cottages in Omaha and at other 
points west. 

" Mr. Train owned personally about five hundred acres in Omaha, 
which cost him only one hundred and seventy-five dollars per acre — 
a most promising investment. He is a noticeable, original Ameri- 
can, who has crowded wonderful and varied experiences into his 
short life. An orphan boy, employed to sweep the counting-room, 
he rose to the head of a great Boston shipping house ; then estab- 
lished a branch in Liverpool; next organized and conducted a 
heavy commission business in Australia, and astonished his neigh- 
bors in that era of fabulous prices, with Brussels carpets, and marble 
counters, and a free champagne luncheon daily in his business ofiice. 
Afterward he made the circuit of the world, wrote books of travel, 
fought British prejudices against street-railways, occupying his 
leisure time by fiery and audacious American war speeches to our 
island cousins, until he spent a fortune, and enjoyed the delights of 
a month in a British prison. 

** Thence he returned to America; lectured everywhere; and now 
he is trying to build a belt of cities across the continent. At least a 
magnificent project. Curiously combining keen sagacity with wild 
enthusiasm, a man who might have built the pyramids, or been 
confined in a strait-jacket for eccentricities, according to the age 
he lived in, he observes dryly that since he began to make money, 
people no longer pronounce him crazy ! He drinks no spirits, uses 
no tobacco, talks on the stump like an embodied Niagara, composes 
songs to order by the hour as fast as he can sing them, like an Italian 
improvisatore, remembers every droll story from Joe Miller to Arte- 
mus Ward, is a born actor, is intensely in earnest, and has the most 
absolute and outspoken faith in himself and his future." 

[At the time Richardson saw me at Omaha, in '64, another noted 
journalist, William Hepworth Dixon, editor of the London Athe- 
nsBum, called on me, traveling with Sir Charles Dilke, who was wri- 
ting Greater Britain. I introduced him to Richardson.— G. F. T.] 



292 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE FAR WEST 
1863-1870 

Very much of my work that has aided most in 
the development of this country was done in the 
great region of the Northwest, then a wild country, 
trackless and uninhabited except by savages. Of 
course, the chief achievement in the West was the 
building of the Union Pacific Railway, which led 
up to the inception and construction of other rail- 
ways and to the present prosperity of the entire 
section. 

But this enterprise was merely a beginning. 
I looked upon it only as the launching of a hun- 
dred other projects, which, if I had been able to 
carry them to completion, would have transformed 
the West in a few years, and anticipated its pres- 
ent state of wealth and power by more than a full 
generation. One of my plans was the creation of 
a chain of great towns across the continent, con- 
necting Boston with San Francisco by a magnifi- 
cent highway of cities. That this was not an idle 
dream is shown by the rapid growth of Chicago, 

293 



MY LIFE IN MAISTY STATES 

which owes its greatness to its situation upon this 
natural highway of trade ; and to the development 
of Omaha, which owes its prosperity directly to 
the Union Pacific Railway and to the other enter- 
prises that I organized in the West. Most of 
these plans were defeated by a financial panic, by 
the lack of cooperation on the part of the very peo- 
ple who were most interested in their success, and 
by events which I shall describe in the following 
chapters of this book. Some of them succeeded, 
however, and I was able to accomplish a great 
deal of work that has gone into the winning and 
making of the West. 

When I went out to Omaha to break ground for 
the Union Pacific Railway, on December 3, '63, 
there was only one hotel in that town. This was the 
Herndon House, a respectable affair, now U. P. 
headquarters. I was astonished that men of en- 
ergy, enterprise, and means had not seized the op- 
portunity to erect a large hotel at this point, which 
had already given every promise of rapid and im- 
mediate growth. But what directly suggested to 
me the building of such a hotel on my own account 
was a little incident that occurred at a breakfast 
that I happened to be giving in the Herndon 
House. 

I had invited a number of prominent men — 
Representatives in Congress, and others — to take 
breakfast with me in this house, as I desired to 
present to them some of my plans. The break- 

294 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST 

fast was a characteristic Western meal, with prai- 
rie chickens and Nebraska trout. While we were 
seated, one of those sudden and always unex- 
pected cyclones on the plains came up, and the 
hotel shook like a leaf in the terrible storm. Our 
table was very near a window in which were large 
panes of glass, which I feared could not withstand 
the tremendous force of the wind. They were quiv- 
ering under the stress of weather, and I called to 
a strapping negro waiter at our table to stand 
with his broad back against the window. This 
proved a security against the storm without; but 
it precipitated a storm within. 

Allen, the manager of the Hemdon, and a man 
with a political turn of mind, saw in the incident 
an assault on the rights of the negroes. He hur- 
ried over to the table and protested against this 
act as an outrage. I could not afford to enter into 
a quarrel with him at the time, so I merely said: 
" I am about the size of the negro ; I will take his 
place." I then ordered the fellow away from the 
window, took his post, and stayed there until the 
fury of the storm abated. Then I was ready for 
Allen. 

I walked out in front of the house and, point- 
ing to a large vacant square facing it, asked who 
owned it. I was told the owner's name and imme- 
diately sent a messenger for him post-haste. He 
arrived in a short time, and I asked his price. It 
was $5,000. I wrote out and handed him a check 

295 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

for the amount, and took from him, on the spot, a 
deed for the property. 

Then I asked for a contractor who could 
build a hotel. A man named Eichmond was 
brought to me. " Can you build a three-story 
hotel in sixty days on this plot! " asked I. After 
some hesitation he said it would be merely a ques- 
tion of money. " How much ? " I asked. " One 
thousand dollars a day." " Show me that you are 
responsible for $60,000." He did so, and I took 
out an envelope and sketched on the back of it a 
rough plan of the hotel. " I am going to the moun- 
tains," I said, " and I shall want this hotel, with 
120 rooms, complete, when I return in sixty days." 

When I got back, the hotel was finished. I im- 
mediately rented it to Cozzens, of West Point, 
New York, for $10,000 a year. This is the famous 
Cozzens's Hotel of Omaha, which has been more 
written about, I suppose, than almost any other 
hostelry ever built in the United States. It is the 
show-place of Omaha to this day. 

The completion of the Union Pacific Eailway 
in '69 was the occasion of my visit to California 
and Oregon. In San Francisco I gave a banquet 
to men prominent in finance and politics, and took 
occasion to refer to the efforts that had been made 
there, as it seemed to me, to aid the seceding 
States. I was making a response to the toast of 
" The Union," and had said that if I had been the 
Federal general in command in California at the 

296 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST 

time, I should have hanged certain men, some of 
whom were present. This was pretty hot shot, 
and I did not wonder at the resentment of the men 
to whom I referred. I was astonished, however, 
by the terrific scoring I received from the city 
press the following morning. I read the reports 
of, and the comments on, my speech as I was mak- 
ing preparations to have my special car taken back 
East that afternoon. I was very indignant, but 
did not know exactly what to do. 

Just at this moment a man approached me and 
said that he would like to have me deliver a lec- 
ture that evening in the theater. He was the 
manager, Mr. Poole. I saw my opportunity, and 
accepted, refusing, however, his proffer of $500 
in gold, and agreeing to take one-half the gross 
receipts for a series of lectures. I delivered 
twenty-eight lectures to crowded houses, and took 
in, for my share, $10,000 in gold. I did not spare 
my critics, but flayed them alive. 

My lectures made me the most conspicuous 
man on the Pacific coast, and I received despatches 
of congratulations, or invitations to deliver lec- 
tures and speeches, almost every hour of the day. 
I accepted a five-hundred-dollar check to go to 
Portland, Oregon, to make the Fourth-of-July 
oration, and the Gussie Tellefair was sent to 
meet me and take me up the Columbia in state. 
The oration was delivered to a big audience of 
Oregonians, trappers and mountaineers, some 

297 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of them wearing the quaintest garb I had ever 
seen. 

I mention this visit to Portland because it 
afforded me opportunity for doing several things 
of importance* I visited the famous Dalles of the 
Columbia river, and while there saw the Indians 
spearing salmon. I asked what they were doing, 
and was told that they were laying in their sup- 
ply for the winter. I went to the place where the 
braves were spearing the fish and asked one of 
them to let me try my hand at the fish-spear. 
Having accustomed myself a little to throwing the 
harpoon, I found that I could manage the Indian's 
weapon quite skilfully, and succeeded in landing 
200 salmon in two hours. Of course the fish were 
running in swarms, but this two hours' work would 
have brought me $1,000 if I could have taken the 
catch to New York. 

I was the first white man, I believe, that had 
taken salmon out of the Columbia, and it then oc- 
curred to me, if the Indians could lay up a supply 
of fish for the winter, why could not white men do 
the same thing! I thereupon suggested the can- 
ning of salmon, which has since been developed 
into so large an industry and has made the Quinnat 
salmon the king-fish of the world, putting Columbia 
salmon into almost every household of civiliza- 
tion. 

Another fact may be recorded here. My 
Fourth-of-July oration had been such a success 

298 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST 

that I was asked to make another speech at Seat- 
tle, on Puget Sound, which was then a struggling 
village. I was accompanying a delegation or 
committee from the East that was looking for a 
good place for the terminus of the Northern 
Pacific Railway, which had been projected after 
the great success of the Union Pacific. When we 
passed the point where Tacoma now stands, I was 
attracted by its appearance and said : " There is 
your terminus." The committee selected the spot, 
and Tacoma was founded there. 

An amusing incident closed this part of my 
journey. I went from Seattle to Victoria, British 
Columbia, and was astonished to find the town 
in the wildest commotion. Troops were at the 
docks, and the moment I landed I observed that 
the greatest interest was taken in me. At last, 
as they saw me walking about alone, one of the 
ofiicials came up and said : " Why, are you alone ? " 
" Of course," I replied. " Did you expect me to 
bring an army with me? " I said this in jest, not 
knowing how closely it touched his question. He 
then took me aside and said, " Read this despatch." 
I opened the despatch and read : " Train is on the 
Hunt." 

I saw what it meant, and how the good people 
had been deceived. The Hunt was the vessel 
I came on, and the telegraph operator at Seattle, 
knowing that I had been with the Fenians and had 
been stirring up a good deal of trouble in Cali- 
21 299 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

fornia, thought he would have some fun with the 
Canadians. The people of Victoria were on the 
lookout for me to arrive with a gang of Fenians ! 
I did not smile, but determined to carry the 
joke a little further. Walking into the telegraph 
office, I filed the following cablegram for Dublin, 
Ireland. "Down England, up Ireland." The 
jest cost me $40 in tolls, but I enjoyed it that 
much. 



300 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE SHARE I HAD IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

1870 

My participation in the Commune in France, in 
the year 70, was the result of chance. I arrived 
at Marseilles at a very critical time in the history 
of that city. It was the hour when the Commune, 
or, as it was styled there by many, the " Red Re- 
public,'^ was born. I was on a tour of the world, 
the voyage in which I eclipsed all former feats 
of travel, and circled the globe in eighty days. 
This served Jules Verne, two years later, as the 
groundwork for his famous romance Around the 
World in Eighty Days. The whole journey had 
been eventful, but I shall write of that in a later 
chapter. 

The French Empire had fallen and the Repub- 
lic had risen within the period of my swift flight; 
and now one of the darkest and most desperate en- 
terprises known in history was afoot — the attempt 
to transform France and the world into a system 
of " communes," erected upon the ruins of all na- 
tional governments. 

301 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I arrived at Marseilles on the Donai, of the Im- 
perial Messagerie line, October 20, 70, and went 
at once to the Grand Hotel de Louvre. Imagine 
my astonishment when I was received there by a 
delegation, and, for the third time, hailed as 
" liberator." The empty title of liberator — so 
easily conferred by the excitable Latin races — 
had become rather a joke with me. The Austral- 
ian revolutionists who wanted to make me Pres- 
ident of their paper republic, were in earnest, and 
would have done something notable, had they ever 
got the opportunity, with sufficient men behind 
them; but the Italians I had not felt much confi- 
dence in, nor had I any desire to work for 
their cause. 

The acclaim with which the people in the 
streets of Marseilles received me, at first jarred 
upon my sensibilities and seemed an echo merely 
of the little affair in Eome. However, I was soon 
to be convinced of the deep sincerity of these revo- 
lutionists, and was destined to take an active 
and honest part in their cause. It is remarkable 
how a slight incident may turn the whole cur- 
rent of one's life. It had been my intention to 
proceed as rapidly as possible to Berlin, and 
take a look at the victorious Prussian army; 
but here I was at the very moment of my ar- 
rival on French soil, involved in the problems 
and struggles of the French people, as pre- 
cipitated by the Prussian army, having for their 

302 



MY SHARE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

object the undoing of much of the work of the 
German conquest. 

When the revolutionary committee hailed me 
as " liberator," I thought they had mistaken me 
for some one else, and asked the leaders if they 
had not done so. " No," they said ; *' we have 
heard of you and want you to join the revolu- 
tion." It seemed that they had kept track of 
my rapid progress around the world, and told 
me they knew when I was at Port Said, and had 
prepared to receive me as soon as I landed in 
Marseilles. 

" Six thousand people are waiting for you now 
in the opera-house," they said. 

'^Waiting for meV I asked, incredulous. 
" How long have they been waiting, and what are 
they waiting for? " 

" They have been assembled for an hour ; and 
they want you to address them in behalf of the 
revolution." 

" Well," said I, making a decision immedi- 
ately, '' I can not keep these good people wait- 
ing. I will go with you." I had decided to 
trust to the inspiration of the moment, when I 
should stand face to face with that volatile 
French audience. 

From the moment I entered the opera-house, 
packed with excited people from the stage to the 
topmost boxes, I was possessed by the French 
revolutionary spirit. The fire and enthusiasm 

303 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

of the people swept me from my feet. I was 
thenceforth a " Communist," a member of their 
" Red Republic." I felt this, as soon as I joined 
that cheering and ecstatic mob — for it really was 
a mob then, and mobs have been the germs of all 
great national movements in France. 

A committee of some sort, prepared for the oc- 
casion, immediately seized hold of me, and we 
marched, or rushed, through the crowd, down the 
aisle, and up on the stage. About 250 persons, 
the more important movers in the agitation, I 
suppose, were standing, all cheering at the top 
of their voices. As I was placed upon the stage, 
in front of the audience, there came a burst of 
cheers of " Vive la Republique ! " " Vive la Com- 
mune ! " and many were shouting out my name 
with a French accent and a nasal "n." It was 
irresistible. I stepped to the front of the stage 
and tried to speak, but for several minutes could 
not utter a word that could be heard a foot away, 
the din of the shouting and cheering was so over- 
whelming. 

When the shouting ceased, I told the people 
that I was in Marseilles on a trip around the world, 
but as they had called upon me to take part in 
their movement, I should be glad to repay, in my 
own behalf, a small portion of the enormous debt 
of gratitude that my country owed to France for 
Lafayette, Rochambeau, and de Grasse. I re- 
peated a part of the " Marseillaise," which always 

304 



MY SHARE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

stirs Frenchmen to the depths, and a few verses 
from Holmes^s poem on France — 

** Pluck Condi's baton from the trench, 
Wake up stout Charles Martel; 
Or give some woman's hand to clench 
The sword of La Pucellel" 

I also urged that France should not yield an 
inch of her territory to the rapacious Prussians. 

The excitement of the hour carried everything 
before it, and the crowd outside, numbering at 
least 20,000, finally was joined by the 6,000 inside, 
and the whole mass, making a grand and noisy 
procession, escorted me to my hotel where I had 
taken the entire front suite of apartments. The 
next morning I was waited upon by a committee 
of the revolutionists. They said they wanted a 
military leader, and that Cluseret was the man for 
the place. He would be able to lead the forces of 
the Ligue du Midi. 

Cluseret was then in Switzerland, where he 
had taken refuge after the troops drove him out 
of Lyons at the orders of Gambetta. He was the 
Gustave Paul Cluseret who had taken part in our 
Civil War, serving on the staffs of McClellan and 
Fremont, and who later was Military Chief of 
the Paris Commune. We sent to Switzerland and 
invited General Cluseret to join us in Marseilles. 
To our surprise he sent word that he would need 
a force of 2,000 armed men! This settled Clu- 
seret, as far as I was concerned. 

305 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

A few days later a card was brought to me 
in the hotel bearing the name " Tirez," and the 
statement that M. Tirez occupied room 113 in the 
same hotel. I went up to this room, and there 
found a splendid-looking fellow with a great mili- 
tary mustache. "Are you M. Tirez 1" I asked. 
"I am General Cluseret," he said. "I thought 
you wanted 2,000 armed men?" I said. "You 
can probably give me more than that number," he 
said, with a smile. " You seem to be in command 
of everything and everybody here." " We shall 
see," I said. I asked him to go to the Cirque with 
me that evening. 

There were at least 10,000 men in this gigantic 
amphitheater. I made a short speech and said I 
wanted to give them a surprise. " You want a 
military leader. I have brought you one. Here 
is your leader — General Gustave Paul Cluseret." 
He was greeted with tremendous cheers. 

We at once organized military headquarters 
and prepared to take possession of the city. In 
this effort we were aided by the liberal views of the 
pr^fet, M. Esquiros, a republican, and later by 
the incapacity of the new prefet appointed by 
Gambetta, M. Gent. The next day we marched 
to the military fortifications with a great mass of 
men. General Cluseret and I were arm in arm 
as we entered the gates. I observed the officer in 
charge of the guns at the entrance about to give 
an order, which I knew meant a volley that would 



MY SHARE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

sweep us into the next world. I sprang forward 
and seized the officer by the arm. " Come to see 
me at the hotel," I whispered in his ear. The 
order to fire was not given, and we filed into the 
fortifications and took possession in the name of 
the Commune — the " Red Republic." 

The following day 150 of the Guarde Mobile 
came to the hotel and demanded General Cluseret. 
I told the officers he was not present, but they in- 
sisted upon invading my rooms. I then told them 
that they would not be permitted to cross the 
threshold alive. I was armed with a revolver, and 
three of my own secretaries were armed in the 
same way. I said to the chief officer at the door 
that there were four men inside and we would shoot 
any one who tried to enter; we thought we could 
kill at least two dozen of them. The Guarde held 
a short council outside, and I soon heard their 
military step resounding down the hall. They 
had given up the search for Cluseret. 

The next morning I saw from my window an 
army marching down the street. I thought it was 
our army, and went out on the balcony and began 
shouting " Vive la Republique ! " and " Vive la 
Commune ! " with the people in the street ; but 
there was an ominous silence in the ranks of the 
troops. They did not respond to these revolu- 
tionary sentiments. Then I saw the new pr^fet, 
M. Gent, Gambetta's man, in a carriage, with 
the army. Suddenly I heard a shot, and Gent 

307 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

dropped to the bottom of the vehicle. Some one 
had tried to kill him, but missed, and the prefet 
did not care to be conspicuous again. 

The troops cam« to a halt directly in front of 
the hotel, and I saw that the officers were regard- 
ing with anger the flag of the Commune that 
floated from the balcony. Orders were given, 
and five men, a firing squad, stepped from the 
ranks and knelt, with their rifles in hand, ready to 
fire. I knew that it was their purpose to shoot 
me. I do not know why, but I felt that if the thing 
had to be, I should die in the most dramatic man- 
ner possible. There were two other flags on the 
balcony, the colors of France and America. I 
seized both of these, and wrapped them quickly 
about my body. Then I stepped forward, and 
knelt at the front of the balcony, in the same mili- 
tary posture as the soldiers below me. I then 
shouted to the officers in French : 

"Fire, fire, you miserable cowards! Fire 
upon the flags of France and America wrapped 
around the body of an American citizen — if you 
have the courage ! " 

An order was spoken, too low for me to catch, 
but the kneeling soldiers dropped their rifles, and 
then rose, and rejoined the ranks. Another order 
was shouted along the line, and the troops marched 
on down the street and out of sight. 

The attempted assassination of the prefet had 
an unexpected effect upon public opinion in 

308 



MY SHAKE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

Marseilles. It turned the mercurial Frenchman 
against the Commune. I advised General Clu- 
seret to go at once to Paris. I even purchased a 
gold- laced uniform for him. His subsequent his- 
tory, as military leader of the Commune in Paris, 
his capture, trial, release, and retirement to Swit- 
zerland, are well known. 

At this time I believe the tide of war might 
have been turned in favor of France by some swift 
movement like those of which the mobile Boers 
made good use in South Africa, perhaps by an at- 
tack on the rear of the German armies. France 
was filled with German soldiers, but Germany was 
unguarded; and I believed then that a body of 
light horsemen, say, like the Algerians, might have 
created such a diversion by a rapid raid to the rear 
that it would have forced the Germans back to the 
Rhine, or even to Berlin. I was astonished by 
the tremendous am.ount of munitions of war, and 
by the masses of troops that were still available 
in the south of France. Leadership, and not 
troops, was what France lacked. 

I left Marseilles for Lyons, after the troops 
tried to shoot me in the balcony of the hotel, and 
was accompanied by Cremieux, one of the leaders 
of the Ligue du Midi. As we left Marseilles, a 
man, wearing conspicuously the ribbon of the 
Legion of Honor, entered our compartment. I at 
once set him down as a spy, and began talking 
with Cremieux in a loud Voice. My estimate of 

309 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

his character was justified in an unpleasant way 
at Lyons. No sooner had we entered the suburbs 
of that city than our friend left the compartment 
and got off the train. 

When the train came to a stop in the station, 
I sprang out of the compartment with Cremieux, 
and was confronted by six bayonets. Both of us 
were placed under arrest. Immediately I remem- 
bered the little slip of paper in my pocket which 
might betray Cluseret, if found, and I seized it 
hastily and put it into my mouth. The officer of 
the squad of soldiers rushed forward to stop me, 
but it was too late. The slip had gone. I had 
swallowed it. 

"That was the address of General Cluseret!" 
shouted the officer. 

" Of course," said I. " And it has gone to a 
rendezvous with my breakfast ! " 

The soldiery took Cremieux and myself to the 
Bastile, in Lyons, and I was detained there for 
thirteen days. When I went into the cell I was 
very tired and sat up against the wall and leaned 
my head against it. In a moment I detected the 
breathing of a man very near me, and perceived 
a crack in the wall, against which a spy in the ad- 
jacent cell was inclining his ear to catch any in- 
criminating words that might pass between Cre- 
mieux and myself. It was the old trick of the In- 
quisition; but it did not serve the purposes of 
these late players of it. 

310 



MY SHARE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

My secretary, Mr. Bemis, who came on from 
Marseilles by a later train, could not find me in 
Lyons. He spent a week in looking for me. At 
the end of that time my wife, who was in New 
York, telegraphed to the American legation at 
Paris asking if the report were true that I had 
been killed. It had been currently reported in 
America that the soldiers had shot me in Mar- 
seilles. Mr. Bemis went immediately to the Guarde 
Mobile, which was in sympathy with the Com- 
mune, the organization from which General Clu- 
seret had been driven by Gambetta. The Guarde 
sent a deputation of 150 officers to the pr(^fet 
of the city, who ordered my immediate release. 
Gambetta was appealed to, and he directed that I 
be sent to him at Tours by special train. 

To Tours I went in style. I had been poisoned 
in the Lyons Bastile, and was ill, in consequence, 
having lost thirty pounds of flesh in thirteen days. 
I was met at Tours by Gambetta' s secretary, M. 
Ranc, afterward a deputy, who told me I could 
see the Dictator at four o'clock. " Why not now? " 
I asked. " Because it is not possible for M. Gam- 
betta to work until he has had his dinner." I 
found that these French officials were as fond 
of their dinner as English officials. At the ap- 
pointed hour M. Ranc took me to the palace of 
the prefecture, and I was admitted at once to Gam- 
betta's presence. 

I found everything in confusion. The prefcc- 
311 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

ture was filled with men who had been waiting for 
the Dictator's pleasure. In the first ante-rooms I 
saw men who had been waiting for three weeks; 
in the next rooms were those who had waited for 
two weeks ; and in the third rooms I found officers 
of the army and navy, who had waited one week. 
As I passed in among these throngs with an air 
of self-possession, they took me for some grand 
personage, and I heard whispers that I must be 
the ambassador from Spain or the Papal Nuncio. 

Gambetta was seated at his desk in a large and 
handsomely furnished room. He made not the 
slightest sign of being aware that I was present. 
He did not even turn his face toward me. I did 
not learn until afterward that the distinguished 
Italian-Frenchman had one glass eye, and could 
see me just as well at an angle as he could full- 
face. But I grew tired of standing there si- 
lent, and was already weary from my long incar- 
ceration. I decided, after taking in this strange 
character, then at the top of the seething pot of 
French politics, that the best course for me was 
to put on a bold front. 

" When a distinguished stranger calls to see 
you, M. Gambetta, I think you might offer him a 
chair." 

The great man smiled, and motioned me to a 
seat with considerable graciousness. I took a 
chair, and said: 

"M. Gambetta, you are the head of France, 
312 



MY SHARE IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 

and I intend to be President of the United States. 
You can assist me, and I can assist you." 

He looked at me with a curious regard, but did 
not smile. 

" Send me to America, and I can help you get 
munitions of war, and win over the sympathy and 
assistance of the Americans." 

I Imew, of course, that he was going to send 
me out of France in any event, and I wanted to 
discount his plan. 

The Dictator smiled again, and said: "You 
sent Cluseret to Paris, and bought him a uniform 
for 300 francs." 

" You are only fairly well informed, M. Gam- 
betta. I paid 350 francs for the uniform." 

" Cluseret is a scoundrel," he said. 

" The Communards call you that," I replied. 

He ended our interview by saying a few pleas- 
ant words, bowing me out of the room, and send- 
ing me out of France forthwith. 

I went straight to London, then to Liverpool, 
and sailed for New York in the Abyssinia, which, 
curiously enough, was afterward the pioneer ship 
on the line of boats between Vancouver and Yoko- 
hama, it having been bought by the Canadian 
Pacific. 



313 



CHAPTEE XXVI 

A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 

1872 

I HAVE passed a great many days in jail. A jail 
is a good place to meditate and to plan in, if only 
one can be patient in such a place. Mucli of my 
work was thought out and wrought out while living 
in the fifteen jails of which I have been a tenant. 
It was in a jail in Dublin, called the Four Courts' 
Marshalsea, that a feeling of confidence that I 
might one day be President of the United States 
first came into definite form. It was in this prison, 
also, that I planned Train Villa, which was to be 
built in Newport. As my life in that Villa, which 
in its day was one of the most famous and luxuri- 
ous in America, was a sort of prelude to my 
campaign for the Presidency, I may fitly say here 
what I have to say about it in this book. 

I had long wanted a handsome residence by the 
sea, and so, when I had nearly completed the work 
done in connection with the Union Pacific Railway, 
and there seemed to be ahead of me a period of 
comparative leisure, I projected this house. My 

314 




fe 



o 



( 



A CANDIDATE FOE PRESIDENT 

plans were made before I was in the Dublin jail. 
My wife built the Villa, or began work on it, while I 
was still in the Marshalsea. The lot on which it 
stands embraced some two and a half acres in the 
most delightful region of Newport. In order that 
my boys might have an opportunity for sport at 
home, I had a building put up for billiards and 
bowling. This was, I believe, the first residence 
in Newport that had a special place of this kind, 
although of course, many had billiard tables. A 
fine cottage was also built for my father-in-law. 
Colonel George T. M. Davis. This cottage was 
sold recently for $50,000, to the Dolans of Phila- 
delphia. 

The Villa itself must have cost $100,000, but 
the truth is, I have never known how much money 
was lavished upon its building and adornment. I 
was called rich and had never, at any time, given a 
thought to the mere details of money. What I 
wanted I got. In those days that was the sub- 
stance of my economic system in personal matters. 
We lived there in manorial style, entertaining so 
lavishly and freely that the Villa became a free 
guest-house for all Newport. I also recollect that 
my living cost me more than $2,000 a week. Now I 
manage to live on $3 a week in the Mills Hotel, or 
Palace, as I call it. Here I am more contented 
than I was at Newport. I seem to be saving $1,997 
a week. We turned out, in Newport, six carriages 
when we went driving ; but this was a display that 
23 315 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

I always set my heart against. It seemed to be 
mere wastefulness. 

Since my occupancy, Train Villa, as it is called 
to this day, has been rented by some of the most 
prominent persons in the fashionable world. 
Among those who have lived in it are the Ker- 
nochans, the Kips, Governor Lippitt of Ehode Is- 
land, some of the Vanderbilts and the Mortimers. 
At the present time, it is occupied by George B. de 
Forest. It was formerly rented for $5,000 for 
three months or the season. It never paid us two 
per centum on its cost, and finally was sold by the 
trustee. Colonel Davis. 

The Villa was once turned into a jail, although 
I was not the captive in that instance. In the 
famous Credit Mobilier case, in 72-73, a man, 
who was my guest at the time, was arrested, and, 
as the Credit Mobilier men then in Newport could 
not give bail in the sum of $1,000,000, as demanded, 
an arrangement was made with the sheriff by 
which the Villa temporarily became a jail, where 
my guest was confined. 

So full of confidence was I that I could be 
elected President in 72, that I telegraphed from 
San Francisco that I would reach Newport on a 
certain day, and wished arrangements made for a 
"Presidential" banquet. Although this banquet 
was not the end of the campaign, it was the last 
flourish of trumpets in my Presidential aspirations. 

My political career in fact was brief. My in- 
316 



A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 



tention was to have it extend through at least a 
Presidential term; but the people would not have 
it so. Prior to '69, 70, 71, and 72, I had taken no 
active part in politics, although I had been in- 
terested in various campaigns and in many great 
public questions of the day. I have already re- 
ferred to the offer made to me by the revolution- 
ists in Australia to make me their President. That 
was, perhaps, the first time that anything political 
ever entered my life. The offer was by no means a 
temptation to me and I refused to consider it, with- 
out a single poignant regret. 

In '65, the Fenians, after I had espoused the 
general cause of the Irish, as of the oppressed of 
every country, asked me to attend their first con- 
vention, which was to be held in Philadelphia. 
They wished me to address them. This I did, but 
I took no active part in the work of the convention 
or of the faction. I had already attended the 
Democratic Convention in Louisville in '64, when 
I held a proxy from Nebraska, and had hoped to 
have General Dix nominated for President and 
Admiral Farragut for Vice-President, but I was 
not permitted to take my seat. 

"While I was in the Four Courts' Marshalsea, 
in Dublin, in '68, James Brooks, of the New York 
Express, sent word to me that the Democrats in 
convention were willing to nominate Salmon P. 
Chase if I would consent to take the second place 
on the tieket. This did not suit me at all, and I 

317 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

sent a despatch to Brooks that I would take the 
first place only, and that as Chase was my friend, 
he could take the second place. This put an end to 
the negotiations. 

But the seed of ambition had been sown, even 
before this, and it germinated in the old Irish 
prison. As soon as I got out of that jail, I began 
my campaign for President of the United States, 
and in ^69 started on a program that involved 1,000 
addresses to 1,000 conventions. It seemed to me 
that, with the effect I had always had upon people 
in my speeches and in personal contact, and with 
the record of great achievements in behalf of the 
progress of the world, especially with regard to 
the development of this country, I should succeed. 
I supposed that a man with my record, and with- 
out a stain on my reputation or blemish in my 
character, would be received as a popular can- 
didate. 

I had not the slightest doubt that I should be 
elected; and, with this sublime self-confidence, 
threw myself into the campaign with an energy 
and fire that never before, perhaps, characterized 
a Presidential candidate. I went into the cam- 
paign as into a battle. I forced fighting at every 
point along the line, fiercely assailing Grant and his 
" nepotism," on the one hand, and Greeley, and the 
spirit of compromise and barter that I felt his 
nomination represented, on the other. 

In the year '69 1 had made twenty-eight speeches 
318 



A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 

in California, and eighty on the Pacific coast. I 
also made a trip over the Union Pacific Railway, 
on the first train over that line, and made ad- 
dresses at many places throughout the country. 
The following year, 70, I seriously set myself to 
the task of appealing to the people directly for 
support, and began a series of public addresses on 
the issues of the day. But this year's work was 
interrupted by my trip around the world in eighty 
days, which consumed the end of the year, from 
the 1st of August to Christmas. 

In 71 I fought hard from January to Decem- 
ber, making the total of my speeches to the people 
800, and having spoken directly, up to that time, 
to something like 2,000,000 persons. Of course, 
my campaign was made on independent lines en- 
tirely. I was not the nominee nor the complaisant 
tool of any party or faction. I made my race as 
one who came from the bosom of the people, 
and who represented the highest interests of the 
people. It was just here that failure came. I 
thought I knew something of the people, and felt 
confident that they would prefer a man of inde- 
pendence, who had accomplished something for 
them, to a man who was a mere tool of his party, 
a distributor of patronage to his friends and rela- 
tives, or to one who was a mere stalking-horse. 
But I was mistaken. The people, as Barnum has 
said, love to be humbugged, and are quite ready 
to pay tribute to the political boss and spoilsman. 

319 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

A remarkable feature of my campaign was that, 
instead of scattering money broadcast, to draw 
crowds or to win votes, I made a charge for ad- 
mission to bear my addresses. I spoke to audiences 
that paid to hear me talk to them in my own be- 
half and in theirs. In three years of active work — 
with the interruption of my trip around the world 
in 70 — I took in $90,000 in admission charges. In 
spite of these charges, I spoke to more people and 
had greater audiences to listen to me than any 
other speaker during that heated campaign. 

There was another remarkable thing about my 
campaign. I possessed tremendous power over 
audiences. So long as I could reach them with my 
voice, or talk with them or shake hands with them, 
I could hold them ; but the moment they got out of 
my reach they got away from me, and slipped back 
again to the sway of the political bosses. 

I saw that my chance of getting the nomina- 
tion was lost long before the assembling of the Lib- 
eral Republican Convention of 72 in Cincinnati. I 
was not astonished by the result of that conven- 
tion, except that I did not expect the nomination 
of Greeley, which I considered as a piece of politi- 
cal treachery, a deliberately calculated movement 
in the interest of Grant. But I still felt, vainly, 
indeed, some hope that the people would see the 
futility of supporting Greeley, and of placing me 
at the head of the ticket. 

I can recall now the scenes in the Convention 
320 



A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 

Hall when Carl Schurz nominated Horace Greeley. 
Outside of some cheering on the part of those who 
were party to the trickery, the nomination was re- 
ceived with ominous stillness. Suddenly, from out 
of the gallery, near where I was seated, there came 
a thin, quavering, piercing voice, like the cry of a 
seer of the wilderness or a wandering Jeremiah: 
" Sold, by God, but the goods not delivered I " 

The words sounded then like a pronouncement 
of doom ; but it proved not to be so. The " deal '* 
was carried out, and the " goods " were delivered. 
Grant was elected, and Greeley, betrayed, retired, 
a heart-broken man. 

Before I close this chapter on the Presidency, 
I wish to record here one distinct service which I 
believe I rendered this city and the country during 
my campaign. It was I, and not the New York 
newspapers, that first exposed the so-called 
" Tweed Ring." I began the fight against this ring 
of corrupt politicians, single-handed, and kept it 
up for more than a year before any New York 
paper or any other journal took up the issue. The 
New York papers, in fact, refused to publish my 
speech exposing this gang of public plunderers, 
and it was published in the Lyons, N. Y., Republi- 
can on April 22, 71. The speech itself was made 
long before Tweed had been accused of misuse of 
public funds. 

^Miile I was on the platform, a voice asked me 
*^Who is the ring?" I had been attacking the 

321 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

" ring " in every public utterance in New York. I 
replied: "Hoffman, Tweed, Sweeney, Fisk, and 
Gould." Later, in the same speech, I said : " Tweed 
and Sweeney are taxing you from head to foot, 
while their horses are living in palaces," and then, 
using, for effect, some of the methods of the 
French Commune, I cried : " To the lamp-post I 
All those in favor of hanging Tweed to a lamp- 
post, say aye ! " There was a tremendous out- 
burst of " ayes." 

In other speeches I went into details and gave 
the sums of which the people of New York had 
been plundered, and the amounts that had been 
paid in bribes to obtain influence in stilling public 
suspicion, and to buy immunity from exposure and 
opportunity for further theft. 

So my campaign for the Presidency was not 
entirely in vain. It was something that seemed un- 
avoidable, toward which I seemed pressed by cir- 
cumstance and fate; and I can rest in the con- 
sciousness that it accomplished some permanent 
good. 



322 



CHAPTER XXVII 

DECLARED A LUNATIC 
1872-1873 

I HAD hardly got out of the Presidential race 
before I got into jail again. I passed easily from 
one kind of life to the other. In fact, the last thing 
I did in connection with my political campaign had 
been the indirect cause of getting me into the 
Tombs. The Tombs has the honor of being the 
fourteenth jail that has given me shelter for pur- 
poses of meditation. 

In November, 72, I was making a speech from 
Henry Clews's steps in Wall Street, partly to quiet 
a mob, when a paper was thrust into my hand. I 
glanced at it, thinking it had to do with myself, and 
saw that Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claf- 
lin had been arrested for publishing in their paper 
in Brooklyn an account of a scandal about a famous 
clergyman in that city. The charge was " obscen- 
ity," and they had been arrested at the instance of 
Anthony Comstock. I immediately said : " This 
may be libel, but it is not obscenity." 

That assertion, with what I soon did to estab- 
323 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

lish its tnith, got me into jail, with the result 
that six courts in succession — afraid to bring me 
to trial for " obscenity " — declared me a " luna- 
tic," and prevented my enjoyment of property in 
Omaha, Nebraska, which is now worth millions of 
dollars. 

From Wall Street I hurried to Ludlow Street 
Jail, where I found Victoria C. Woodhull and 
Tennie C. Claflin in a cell about eight by four feet. 
I was indignant that two women, who had merely 
published a current rumor, should be treated in 
this way, and took a piece of charcoal and wrote 
on the newly whitewashed walls of the cell a 
couplet suggesting the baseness of this attack upon 
their reputations. It is sufficient to say here that 
public feeling was so aroused that these women 
were soon set free; but I got myself deeper and 
deeper into the toils of the courts. 

In order to prove that the publication was not 
obscene, if judged by Christian standards of pu- 
rity, I published in my paper, called The Train 
Ligue, three columns of quotations from the Bible. 
Every verse I used was worse than anything pub- 
lished by these women. I was immediately ar- 
rested on a charge of " obscenity," and taken 
to the Tombs. I was never tried on this charge, 
but was kept in jail as a lunatic, and then dis- 
missed, under the ban of declared lunacy, and 
have so remained for thirty years. Although 
the public pretended to be against me, it was 

324 



DECLARED A LUNATIC 



very eager to buy the edition of my paper that 
gave these extracts from the Bible. The price of 
the paper rose from five cents a copy to twenty, 
forty, sixty cents, and even to one dollar. In a few 
days it was selling surreptitiously for two dollars 
a copy. 

I was put in Tweed^s cell, number 56, in " Mur- 
derers* Row," in the Tombs, where at that time 
were twenty-two men imprisoned under the charge 
of murder. I made the twenty-third inhabitant of 
that ghastly " Row." It is remarkable that not 
one of these men was hanged. All were either 
acquitted, or tried and sentenced and got off with 
varying terms of service. 

It was not a select, but it was at least a famous, 
group of men in " Murderers' Row." Across the 
narrow hallway, just opposite my cell, was Ed- 
ward S. Stokes, who had killed James Fisk, Jr. 
Next to me were John J. Scannell and Richard 
Croker, both of whom have been prominent in the 
city administration in later years. There was, also, 
the famous Sharkey, who might have got into worse 
trouble than any of us, but who escaped through 
the pluck and ingenuity of Maggie Jordan. Maggie 
happened to be about the same size as her lover, 
and changed clothes with him in the cell. The 
warden, one morning, found he had a woman in his 
cage instead of Sharkey. This was the last ever 
heard of Sharkey, so far as I know. 

My chief purpose in jail was not to get out, but 
325 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

to be tried on the charge of obscenity. I had been 
arrested for that offense, and determined that I 
would be either acquitted or convicted. But I have 
never had a trial to this day. I do not believe that 
any court in the land would face the danger of try- 
ing to convict a man of publishing obscenity for 
quoting from the standard book on morality read 
throughout Christendom. 

However this may be, I was offered a hundred 
avenues of escape from jail, every conceivable one, 
except the honest and straightforward one of a 
fair trial by jury. Men offered to bail me out; 
twice I was taken out on proceedings instituted by 
women; but I would not avail myself of this way 
to freedom. Several times I was left alone in the 
court-house or in hallways, or other places, where 
access to the street was easy, entirely without 
guards, in the vain hope that I would walk off with 
my liberty. I was discharged by the courts ; and I 
was offered freedom if I would sign certain papers 
that were brought to me, but I invariably refused 
to look at them. In all cases I merely turned back 
and took my place in the cell, and waited for 
justice. 

In '73 I was finally taken before Judge Davis 
in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. "William F. 
Howe, who died this year, was one of my coun- 
sel, and Clark Bell was another. Howe took 
the ground, first, that obviously there could be 
nothing obscene in the publication of extracts 

326 



DECLAKED A LUNATIC 



from the Bible, and, second, if there were, that I 
was insane at the time of the publication. The 
judge hastily said that he would instruct the 
jury to acquit me if the defense took this posi- 
tion. Mr. Bell then asked that a simple ver- 
dict of " not guilty " be rendered ; but the judge 
insisted upon its form being " Not guilty, on 
the ground of insanity." This verdict was 
taken. 

I rose immediately, and said : " I protest against 
this whole proceeding. I have been four months 
in jail ; and I have had no trial for the offense with 
which I am charged." I felt that I was in the same 
plight as Paul. The Bible and the Church, surely, 
could not condemn me for quoting Scripture ; and 
I had appealed unto Caesar; but Caesar refused, 
out of sheer cowardice, to hear me and try me. I 
was not even listened to when I made this protest, 
and I shouted, so that all must hear me : " Your 
honor, I move your impeachment in the name of 
the people ! " 

The sensation was tremendous. " Sit down ! " 
roared the judge. He evidently thought that I 
would attack him. An order committing me to the 
State Lunatic Asylum was issued, and I was taken 
back to the Tombs. But I did not go to the asylum. 
Another writ of habeas corpus took me out of jail, 
and I at last turned my back on the Tombs — a 
lunatic by judicial decree. I hope that the courts, 
inasmuch as I am their ward, and have been for 

327 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

thirty years, have protected me in my rights, and 
have safeguarded those interests in Omaha where 
some millions of dollars depend upon the question 
of my sanity. 

The moment I was taken out of the Tombs, 
I went down town, had a bath, got a good meal, 
put on better clothes, and bought passage for 
England. I went to join my family at Homburg, 
as my sons were then in Germany, studying at 
Frankfort. 

This Woodhull-Claflin affair had far-reaching 
effects. Besides leaving me for thirty years in 
the grip of the court, it affected many other 
persons. I shall refer here only to one of these, 
the publisher of a newspaper in Toledo, who 
printed some of the matter that I had printed in 
New York. He was prosecuted, and his paper and 
press were seized. The poor fellow asked me to 
lecture in his interest. I could not do this, but 
helped him to raise some money to buy a new 
printing-press. This was in August, '83, when I 
was at Vevay, Switzerland. 

A worthless piece of paper eventually fell into 
the hands of another man, who proceeded to 
prosecute me, and, with the assistance of the 
courts, kept me in the Charles Street Jail, Boston, 
for some time. I was arrested for this old debt of 
another man, and was refused the constitutional 
relief of habeas corpus by Judge Devins and five 
other judges of Massachusetts. The amount of 

328 



DECLAKED A LUNATIC 



the debt had steadily increased, and was $800 in 
'89. Finally, I went before Judge McKim, and he 
at once dismissed the case as groundless. 

This brought my jail experiences to a close. 
Was it fitting that Boston, where I had lived and 
worked; where I had devised the building of the 
greatest ships the world had known up to that 
time; where I had projected and organized the 
clipper-ship service to California, and opened a 
new era in the carrying trade of the world, and 
where I had organized the Union Pacific Railway 
to develop the entire West and draw continents 
nearer together, should put me in jail for a petty 
debt that I did not owe, as in some sort an evidence 
of its gratitude ? 

My prison experience has been more varied 
than that of the most confirmed and hardened 
criminal ; and yet I have never committed a crime, 
cheated a human being, or told a lie. I have been 
imprisoned in almost every sort of jail that man 
has devised. I have been in police stations, in 
Alarshalseas in England and in Ireland, in common 
jails in Boston, in the Bastile of Lyons, in the Pre- 
fecture at Tours as the prisoner of Gambetta, 
Dictator of France, and in the famous old Tombs 
of New York. I have used prisons well. They 
have been as schools to me, where I have reflected, 
and learned more about myself — and a man's own 
self is the best object of any one's study. I have, 
also, made jails the source of fruitful ideas, and 

329 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

from them have launched many of my most start- 
ling and useful projects and innovations. And so 
they have not been jails to me, any more than they 
were to Lovelace : 

** stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 
That for an hermitage." 



330 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY, SIXTY-SEVEN, 
AND SIXTY DAYS 

1870, 1890, 1892 

I WENT around the world in eighty days in the 
year 70, two years before Jules Verne wrote his 
famous romance, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre- 
vingts Jours, which was founded upon my voy- 
age. Since then I have made two tours of the 
world, one in sixty-seven and a half days, and the 
other in sixty. The last voyage still stands as the 
record trip in circling the globe. 

I have always been something of a traveler, 
restless in my earlier years, and never averse to 
visiting new scenes and experiencing new sensa- 
tions. In Australasia I had improved every op- 
portunity to see the new world of the South Seas, 
and later had visited every part of the Orient that 
I could by any possibility reach during my vari- 
ous journeys in that portion of the globe. Europe 
I had traversed quite thoroughly, from the Crimea 
to Nijnii Novgorod, from the Volga to the Thames, 
from Spain to Finland. When I left Australia it 
23 331 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

was my intention to establish a great business in 
Yokohama, and, when that had been done, I in- 
tended to pass on across the Pacific, thus girdling 
the globe; but my first effort to go around the 
world was prevented by the war in the Crimea, 
and so I turned back and came home, as already 
described, by way of China, India, Egypt, and 
Europe. 

The desire for travel possessed me mightily in 
'69, just after the golden spike was driven at the 
completion of the Union Pacific Eailway, by which 
California and New York were made nearer one 
another by many days of travel. The circumfer- 
ence of the globe had been shrunken. I wanted, 
naturally, to be the first man to utilize the great 
advantage thus given to travel by making the 
quickest trip around the world. 

After closing my lecture tour on the Pacific 
coast in the spring and summer of '70, I prepared 
for such a trip, carefully calculating that it could 
be made within eighty days, even with the inevi- 
table losses due to bad connections at different 
ports. I wanted to take my sons, George and 
Elsey, with me, but, at the last moment, they were 
prevented from going. I found out only a few 
days ago, when accusing my daughter Sue of keep- 
ing them in Newport, that their mother had given 
them ten golden eagles each not to go. I sailed 
from San Francisco August 1, 70. On the same 
ship was Susan B. King, whom I found in San 

332 



TRIPS AROUND THE WORLD 

Francisco waiting to sail, as she was tired of the 
way her affairs were going in New York and 
wanted a long trip for rest and recreation. She 
had $30,000 with her, which she said she would try 
to invest profitably on the voyage. She was then 
quite an old woman, as the world generally esti- 
mates age. 

I made Yokohama in very good time, and went 
immediately to the Japanese capital, the new seat 
of the Emperor, Tokyo. I may record here a very 
curious thing. I believe I was the last man — the 
last foreigner, at least — who had taken part in an 
old national custom of Japan, by which persons of 
opposite sex bathe together, without bathing suits. 
It was then considered, in that land of good morals 
and fine esthetic sense, that no impropriety was 
involved in this custom. Manners and customs 
there were open and free as in Greece, when 
Athens was " the eye of Greece " and the center of 
the world's civilization. I went to one of the pub- 
lic baths to experience a decidedly new sensation. 
I was allowed to bathe with old men and women, 
young men and maidens — and no one, except, per- 
haps, myself, felt any degree of embarrassment or 
false modesty. 

But the fact that a foreigner was bathing in 
this way with Japanese women and girls made 
something of a stir in Tokyo that had been unex- 
pected by me. It seems that, a short time before, 
some Englishmen had gone into one of the public 

333 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



baths and made themselves very offensive. This 
had taught the Japanese that they could not trust 
the foreigner, and they had already nearly decided 
to exclude foreigners from their baths, or to 
separate the sexes. My experience was, therefore, 
the last, as I believe. After this the sexes were 
not permitted to bathe together. 

I observed that the Japanese used small paper 
packages for tea, thus making it convenient to 
handle tea. I then recalled the custom of the 
Chinese in compressing tea for transportation by 
caravan to the great Fair of Nijnii Novgorod. 
Here was an opportunity, I thought, and I sug- 
gested to Susan B. King that she might invest her 
$30,000 to good purpose in sending to New York 
a cargo of tea put up in little paper packages, and 
that, if she wanted to try it, I would give her 
letters to men in Canton who could arrange the 
matter for her. She undertook the scheme, and I 
wrote a description of it for Anglin's Gazette, in 
Yokohama. The tea was shipped to New York, 
and was handled at the Demorest headquarters. 
The tea was in half-pound and pound packages. 
This was long before Sir Thomas Lipton employed 
this method of putting up teas. 

At Saigon, in French Cochin-China, I met the 
United States ship Alaska; and from that port 
sailed on a ship of the Messagerie Imperiale line 
for Marseilles. The remainder of the voyage was 
uneventful, except for the diversion just before we 

334 



TEIPS AROUND THE WORLD 

left Singapore of hearing the news of the fall of the 
Second Empire, the defeat of Louis Napoleon at 
Sedan, and the establishment of the republic. 

I have already recorded, in the chapter on the 
Commune in France, my arrival at Marseilles and 
my experiences in the brief period of my visit. 
After I had been arrested and liberated, and had 
had my interview with Gambetta at Tours, I 
passed on rapidly to New York, and finished my 
tour of the world inside of eighty days. 

My second trip was made in the year '90. I 
planned it while I was in jail in Boston for a debt 
that I did not contract. There had been some note- 
worthy efforts on the part of newspaper writers 
to make a record-breaking trip, and Miss Bisland 
had gone around in seventy-eight days, while 
Nellie Ely had succeeded in making the voyage in 
seventy-three days. I proposed to Col. John A. 
Cockerill, of the New York World, who had sent 
Nellie Bly on her trip, to make the circuit in less 
time ; but he did not care to upset the World's own 
record. I then telegraphed to Radebaugh, pro- 
prietor of the Tacoma Ledger, that if he would 
raise $1,000 for a lecture in Tacoma, I would make 
a trip around the world in less than seventy days. 
He told me to come on. 

As I started West, to sail on the Abyssinia, I 
received message after message from Radebaugh. 
Instead of the $1,000 I had asked for, $1,500 had 
been subscribed by the time I reached Chicago, and 

335 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

at St. Paul it had gone up to $3,500. I soon 
reached Tacoma, and lectured there to an inunense 
audience, taking in $4,200, the largest amount ever 
paid for a single lecture — and sailed out into the 
Pacific March 18th. I was accompanied by S. W. 
Wall, editor of the Ledger. Lafcadio Hearn, the 
distinguished writer, was on the same ship, on his 
way to Japan. He was so ill that he did not leave 
his stateroom during the voyage. 

We made Yokohama in sixteen days, and the 
moment I landed I telegraphed to the American 
legation at Tokyo to get me a passport. It had 
always taken three days to get a passport, but I 
said that I must have this at once, and I got it. 
In seven hours I was on the way to Kobe, over- 
land, three hundred miles across Japan. I caught 
the German ship for Nagasaki, from which point, 
after a short delay, I sailed for Hongkong. In a 
trip of this kind, of course, one sees little of in- 
terest. It is a mere question of rushing from 
vessel to vessel the moment you get into port, or 
of catching trains, or of chartering boats to bridge 
gaps, or of haggling with ship-captains or railway 
managers about getting extra accommodations at 
very extra prices. 

My longest delay was at Singapore, where I 
lost forty hours. The next longest loss of time 
was in New York — ^wonderful to relate — where I 
was delayed thirty-six hours, although four rail- 
ways were competing for the honor of taking me 

336 



TEIPS AROUND THE WORLD 

across the continent on a record-breaking journey. 
I arrived on Saturday, and had to charter a special 
car — which cost $1,500 — and could not get away 
until Monday morning. I was near being delayed 
a day at Calais, France, but succeeded in charter- 
ing a boat to take me over the Channel. As this 
boat carried the British mails, I was relieved of the 
expense by the British Government. 

At Portland I met with a most annoying delay 
of five hours, due entirely to mismanagement. 
This most unexpectedly lengthened out my tour at 
the very end, and so angered me that I refused to 
attend a banquet the people had prepared for me. 
I pushed on to Tacoma as soon as I could get any- 
thing to carry me, and arrived there exactly sixty- 
seven days, thirteen hours, two minutes, and fifty- 
five seconds from the time I had started. The 
actual time of traveling was fifty-nine days and 
seven hours. Seven days and five hours had been 
lost. This was then the fastest trip around the 
world. It has been beaten since by myself. 

As I had started on my second trip from a 
Pacific coast point, there was a good deal of rivalry 
among the growing towns in that section with re- 
gard to the honor of being the starting-point of my 
third trip in '92, in which I eclipsed all previous 
records. I had already announced that this could 
readily be done, as the Pacific steamships were 
very much faster than they had been at the time of 
my former voyage, and as the connections at vari- 

337 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

ous ports were much better. Sir William Van 
Home had also written that he wanted me to make 
another tour of the world, using one of the fast 
ships of the Canadian Pacific road, the famous 
Empresses, that soon would be put on the line to 
Yokohama. The new town of Whatcom, on Puget 
Sound, in the extreme northwest of Washington, 
raised the amount necessary for the trip, and I 
made my start from that point, catching the Em- 
press of India from Vancouver. 

An account of this voyage would necessarily be 
only a panoramic glance at a narrow line around 
the world. I made Yokohama in eleven days, was 
at Kobe, Japan, in thirteen, and at Shanghai in 
fifteen. Here I had some difficulty in finding a fast 
steamer for Singapore, but succeeded in getting 
aboard a swift German boat, the Friga, which put 
me in Singapore in time to catch the Moyune, the 
last of the fast tea ships, and on her I sailed as 
far as Port Said, through the Suez Canal. At 
Port Said I boarded the Ismaila for Brindisi, 
Italy. Then I again rushed across Europe, and 
caught the Majestic at Liverpool for New York. 
I found a distinguished company on board, 
including Ambassador John Hay, D. 0. Mills, 
Lady Stewart, Mrs. Paran Stevens, and Senator 
Spooner. 

I arrived in New York in good time, had a very 
slight delay in comparison with that of my second 
voyage, and went flying across the continent to 

338 




Home of (George FrMi.cis T.ain fic.n l.sfj:} to 1869 
Xo. 156 M.-idison Awmic. X.-w y„rk. 




o 




to 

o 
O 



1 



TRIPS AROUND THE WORLD 

Whatcom. The entire trip, giving a complete cir- 
cuit of the globe, was made in sixty days. 

To these three trips I attach no more impor- 
tance, I hope, than is fairly their due. In each of 
them, in succession, I had beaten all previous 
records of travel; and this was something in the 
interests of all persons who travel, as showing 
what could be done under stress, and as a stim- 
ulus to greater efforts to reduce the long months 
and days consumed on voyages from country to 
country. But they were, as I consider them, 
merely incidents in a life that has better things to 
show. One of these voyages, the one in which I 
" put a girdle round the earth " in eighty days, has 
the honor of having given the suggestion for one of 
the most interesting romances in literature. This, 
at least, is something. 

But I give this brief account of my voyages, at 
the end of my autobiography, chiefly because I re- 
gard them as somewhat typical of my life. I have 
lived fast. I have ever been an advocate of speed. 
I was bom into a slow world, and I wished to oil 
the wheels and gear, so that the machine would 
spin faster and, withal, to better purposes. I sug- 
gested larger and fleeter ships, to shorten travel on 
the ocean. I built street-railways, so that the work- 
ers of the world might save a few minutes from 
their days of pitiless toil, and so might have a little 
leisure for enjoyment and self -improvement. I 
built great railway lines — the Atlantic and Great 

339 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 

Western, and the Union Pacific — that the continent 
might be traversed by men and commerce more 
rapidly, and its waste places made to blossom like 
the rose. I wished to add a stimulus, a spur, a 
goad — if necessary — that the slow, old world 
might go on more swiftly, " and fetch the age of 
gold," with more leisure, more culture, more hap- 
piness. And so I put faster ships on the oceans, 
and faster means of travel on land. 

My own rapid tours of the world are, therefore, 
typical of my life. Thus an account of them seems 
to round it off fitly with a "Bon voyage" to 
every one. 



(1) 



340 



INDEX 



Achinese, subjugation of the, 

178. 
Aden, visit to, 208. 
Adirondack Railway, 2G0. 
American Merchant in Europe, 

Asia, and Australia, an, 222. 
Andaman Islands, 204. 
Anglo-American, the, 72, 144. 
Anglo-Saxon, the, 55, 58, 72. 
Anjer, visit of the natives at, 

174. • 
Antietam, Battle of, 282. 
Ariens, Admiral, 251. 
Around the world tours, 331. 
Around the World in Eighty 

Days, 301, 331. 
Ashburner, George, 204. 
Astor, John Jr.cob, Jr., 44. 
Atlantic and Great Western 

Railway, 237, 269. 
Australia, begin business in, 

127; gold-fever in, 130, 141; 

outlaws of, 152, 156; railway 

system of, 209; rebellion in, 

156. 
Austria, travels in, 233. 

Bailey, Crawshay, and Atlantic 
and Great Western Railway, 
244. 



Balaklava, visit to, 217. 

Balmoral, visit to, 92. 

Banka, tin mines of, 179. 

Banking and gambling com- 
pared, 86. 

Banks, Gen. Nathaniel P., 38, 
58. 

Baring, Thomas, visit to Amer- 
ica, 71. 

Bartley, Judge, 244. 

Bastile at Lyons, a prisoner in 
the, 310. 

Batavia, Java, beauty of, 175. 

Bemis, Emery, 37. 

Bemis, George Pickering, 8, 48, 
273, 311. 

Bennett, James Gordon, 222. 

Beyrout, visit to, 215. 

Birkenhead, tramways in, 261. 

Black Hole of Calcutta, 205. 

Blockade running, 272. 

Bly, Nellie, trip round the 
world, 335. 

Bombay, India, railroad in, 270. 

" Bonanza nugget," the, story 
ot 141. 

Boomerang, the, 169. 

Booth, Edwin, in MelboumCj 
166. 

Botany Bay, 144. 



341 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



Bougevine, Gen., in China, 196. 

Bowling, skill in, 79; in Aus- 
tralia, 135. 

Braemar, meeting with Lord 
John Russell at, 92. 

Bridges, the phrenologist, 122. 

Briticisms, 91. 

Brooke, "Sarawak," 179. 

Brougham, John, visit to Liver- 
pool, 124. 

Bunker Hill Day, 112. 

Bury, Lord, 105. 

Bushnell, the actor, in Mel- 
bourne, 167. 

Cairo, land trip from Suez to, 

209. 
Calcutta, visit to, 204. 
Caldwell, Captain, partner in 

the Australian house, 127, 

136, 223. 
California, discovery of gold in, 

71. 
Canada, visit to, 86. 
Canning, Lord, Governor-Gen- 
eral of India, 207. 
Canton, visit to, 182, 185. 
Cape May, in 1850, 79. 
Carleton, Mrs., meeting with, 

83. 
Castiglione, Countess, 230. 
Ceylon, visit to, 208. 
Chatsworth, visit to, 102. 
China, visit to, 180; population 

of, 190. 
Chinese, civilization of the, 

197; customs of the, 190; 

honesty of the, 187. 
Choate, Rufus, retained in the 

Franklin case, 62. 
Chronicle, London, purchase of 

the, 272. 



Cincinnati, honeymoon trip to, 
116. 

Civil War in the United States, 
England and the, 271. 

Claflin, Tennie C, arrest of, 
323. 

Clarke, John, Jr., 7, 9. 

Clay, Cassius M., debate with, 
279. 

Clay, Henry, calls on, 81. 

Cluseret, Gen. Gustave Paul, 
summoned from Switzerland, 
305. 

Collie, Alexander, 180. 

Collingwood, home at, 135. 

Commune, the, 301. 

Constantine, Grand Duke, meet- 
ing with, at Strelna, 251. 

Constantinople, visit to, 216. 

Cook, Captain, in Botany Bay, 
145. 

Copenhagen, tramway in, 269. 

Cozzens's Hotel, Omaha, 296. 

Credit Foncier, 285. 

Credit Mobilier of America, 
260, 285, 316. 

Crimea, in the, 217. 

Cristina, Queen Maria, and At- 
lantic and Great Western 
Railway, 227, 237. 

Crystal Palace, 103, 104. 

Dalhousie, Lord, Governor-Gen- 
eral of India, 207. 

Dallas, George M., 250. 

Daniel Webster, the, 117. 

Darlington, England, tramways 
in, 269. 

Davis, Col. George T. M., 110, 
116, 259. 

Delane, John, editor London 
Times, 251. 



342 



INDEX 



Delmonico's, McHenry's $15,- 
000 dinner at, 246. 

De Morny, Count, 228. 

De Questa, Rodrigo, and Atlan- 
tic and Great Western Rail- 
way, 238. 

Derby, J. C, 273. 

Devonshire, Duke of, meeting 
with the, 101. 

Dinsmore, Mr., meeting with, 
87. 

Dombriski, Prince, received by, 
255. 

Donohue, Irish patriot, 165. 

Donovan, the phrenologist, 122. 

Drinking by women in 1850, 83. 

Dublin, imprisonment in, 314. 

Duckbill, the Australian, 169. 

Durant, Dr. T. C, president of 
Credit Mobilier, 260. 

Elephants as carriers, 208. 

Emerson, Ralph W., lecture at 
Waltham, 39; engages pas- 
sage for Europe, 60. 

Emigration, Irish, to America, 
76; of the Landsdowne ten- 
ants, 97; to Tasmania, 148. 

"Emperor, the," fountain at 
Chatsworth, 102. 

England, first impressions of, 
90; introduction of tram- 
ways in, 259; and the Civil 
War in the United States, 
271. 

Excelsior, the Chinese, 193. 

Fallow, Christopher and John, 

239. 
Fenton, Reuben E., 243. 
Fillmore, Millard, President, 

113. 



Fiske, Stebbins, 13. 

Fitzroy, Sir Charles, Governor 
of New South Wales, 143. 

"Five-Star Republic," the, of 
Australia, 157. 

Flowers, love of, 177. 

Flying Cloud, the, 72, 221. 

Flying-fish, experience with, 208. 

Fowler, the phrenologist, 123. 

France, travels in, 233. 

Franklin, wreck of the, 61. 

Franklin, Sir John, house in 
Tasmania, 150. 

Frost, Abigail Pickering, 10. 

Frost, George W., 14. 

Frost, Leonard, 39. 

Fuchow, visit to, 200. 

Fuller, Frank, builder of Crys- 
tal Palace, 104. 

Fuller, Col. Hiram, 93. 

Gambetta, interview with, 311. 
Gambling at Saratoga in 1850, 

85. 
Geneva, Switzerland, tramway 

in, 269. 
Georgetown Convent, visit to, 

82. 
Germany, travels in, 233. 
Ginger, preparation of Canton, 

190. 
"Godowns," 185. 
Golden Age, the, and Black 

Warrior incident, 143. 
Gold-fever, in California, 71; in 

Australia, 130, 141. 
Gordon, "Chinese," 196. 
Governor Davis, the, 64. 
Grant, U. S., election to the 

presidency, 321. 
Gray Nunnery, Montreal, visit 

to the, 87. 



343 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



Greeley, Horace, nomination of, 

320. 
Green, E. H., in Hongkong, 

182. 
Greig, Colonel, entertained by, 

254. 
Guild, B. F., editor of Boston 

Commercial Bulletin, 276. 

Harris, Townsend, 179. 

Havelock, General, 208. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 58. 

Hayes, Kate, in Melbourne, 167. 

Heard, Augustine, author of 
The Chinese Excelsior, 193, 
200. 

Henry, voyage to Boston on 
the, 7, 16. 

Herald, New York, in 1856, 221. 

Hill, Rowland, English postal 
reformer, 108. 

Hobart Town, Tasmania, visit 
to, 149. 

Holmes, Joseph A., secure em- 
ployment with, 42. 

Hongkong, visits to, 182, 203. 

Hooligan, finder of the " bonan- 
za nugget," 141. 

Horsemanship, 112. 

Hotel scheme for London, 105. 

Howe, Joseph, ex-Governor of 
Nova Scotia, 113. 

Howitt, William and Mary, 149. 

Hudson, Captain, 249. 

Hudson, Frederick, 222. 

Hunt, Thornton, made editor 
of London Morning Chron- 
icle, 272. 

Imprisonment, 314, 334. 
India, visit to, 204. 
Inventions, 106. 



Irish immigration to America, 

76. 
Italy, travels in, 233. 

Japan, leaves Australia for, 
168, 171; trip abandoned, 200. 
Java, visit to, 174. 
Jerusalem, visit to, 211. 
Joppa, visit to, 211. 
Joshua Bates, the, 58, 72. 

Kangaroos, Sidney Smith on, 

169. 
Keene, Laura, in Melbourne, 

166. 
Kennard, Thomas, and Atlantic 

and Great Western Railway, 

243. 
King, Susan B., 332. 
Krakatoa, volcano of, 175. 
Kremlin, at the, 255. 

Lachine Rapids, shooting the, 
86. 

Laird, John, and the Birken- 
head tramways, 261. 

Lake Champlain, visit to, 88. 

Lake George, visit to, 88. 

Lamartine, Alphonse de, meet- 
ing with Seward, 232. 

Lansdowne, Marquis of, 97. 

Latrobe, Governor, 158. 

Launceston, Tasmania, visit to, 
151. 

Lawrence, Abbott, United 
States Minister, 98. 

Lawrence, Bigelow, marriage 
to Sallie Ward, 114. 

Leghorn, explosion at, 233. 

Lemon, Mark, 105. 

Lexington, burning of the, 10, 



344 



INDEX 



Lightning, the, 221. 

Ligue du Midi, the, 305. 

Li Hung Chang, meeting with, 
195. 

Lillo, Leon, 227; and Atlantic 
and Great Western Railway, 
238. 

Lincoln, President, and eman- 
cipation, 280. 

Liverpool, take charge of busi- 
ness in, 79, 90; business fa- 
cilities of, 94; return to, after 
marriage, 117; introduction 
of street-railways, 260. 

London, visits to, 98, 104; in- 
troduction of tramways, 263. 

Lyons, imprisonment at, 310. 

Macao, visit to, 182. 

MacDonald, Sir John A., 113. 

MacFarlane, Rev. J. R., com- 
panion in the Holy Land, 
211. 

McGill, James, Australian out- 
law, 159. 

McHenry, James, 94, 108, 121, 
231; and Atlantic and Great 
Western Railway, 237. 

Mackay, Charles, author, 125. 

Mackay, Donald, 72, 223. 

Mackay, John W., 76. 

MacMahon, Marshal, in the 
Crimea, 219. 

Madras, visit to, 208. 

Marriage, 109. 

Marseilles, in the Commune, 
301. 

Marsh, John Alfred, 121. 

Marshall, Matthew, Jr., and 
Atlantic and Great Western 
Railway, 245. 

Martin, John, Irish patriot, 165. 



Marvin, the hotel-keeper, 83. 
Mavrockadatis, the, trip to 

Newfoundland on, 274. 
Melbourne, Australia, begin 

business in, 127; in 1854, 

133; public improvement in, 

170. 
Methodism, New England, 21, 

45. 
Mirage, a, 209. 
Montez, Lola, in Melbourne, 

167. 
Montreal, visit to, 86. 
Morse, Salmi, 133. 
Moscow, visit to, 255. 
Mount Vernon, visit to, 82. 
Mufioz, Fernando. 237. 

Nana Sahib, 208. 
Naples, visit to, 234. 
Napoleon, Emperor Louis, 272; 

hatred of, 226. 
New Orleans, yellow fever at, 2. 
New South Wales, gold-fever 

in, 130, 141. 
New York, to sell Flying Cloud, 

73; vacation in, 79. 
Niagara Falls, visit to, 86, 111. 
Nicholson, Sir Charles, 143. 
Nijnii Novgorod, visit to, 256. 
Noroton, Conn., Soldiers' Home 

in, 164. 

O'Brien, Smith, Irish patriot, 
165. 

Ocean Monarch, the, 72; burn- 
ing of, 59. 

Omaha, development of, 294. 

Opium trade, 67; English, in 
China, 196. 

Otis, Mrs. Harrison Grey, meet- 
ing with, 84. 

Outlaws, Australian, 152. 



345 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 



Palestine, visit to, 211. 

Paris, first visit to, 224, 
226. 

Parker, Dr., United States Min- 
ister to China, 180. 

Parliament, the, trip to Liver- 
pool on, 90. 

Paxton, Sir Joseph, meeting 
with, 103. 

Pennock, Commander, 249. 

Peto, Sir Morton, 246. 

Philippines, war in the, 178. 

Phillips, Wendell, and the ne- 
gro, 281. 

Phrenology, experiences with, 
121. 

Pickering, Rev. George, 1, 21. 

Pickering, Judge Gilbert, 23. 

Pickering, Maria, 1. 

Pidgin-English, 185, 192. 

Pigeon-netting, 30. 

Pirates, Chinese, 182, 201. 

Plymouth Rock, the, trip to 
Melbourne on, 127. 

Point de Galle, Ceylon, visit to, 
208. 

Porter, Capt. David D., visits 
Melbourne, 143. 

Portland, Ore., speech at, 297. 

Presidential aspirations, 314. 

Pyramids, trip to the, 209. 

Railway building, in Australia, 
131, 269; Atlantic and Great 
Western Railway, 237, 269; 
English street-railways, 259; 
Union Pacific Railway, 269, 
283. 

Red Jacket, the, 221; the in- 
cident at Melbourne, 138. 

Rhoades, Sallie, 24. 

Rianzares, Duke of, 227, 237. 



Richardson, Albert D., Beyond 

the Mississippi, 291. 
Ripley, George, 38. 
Ristori, meeting with, 228. 
Rome, hailed as " liberator " in 

uprising in, 235. 
Rumford, Count, 38. 
Rush, Mrs., meeting with, 84. 
Russell, Lord John, meeting 

with, at Braemar, 92; and 

the Civil War, 272. 
Russia, visit to, 249. 

St. Petersburg, visit to, 251. 

St. Petersburg, the, 64. 

Sala, George Augustus, 105; in 
America, 260. 

Salamanca, Jos6 de, Spanish 
banker, 228; and Atlantic 
and Great Western Railway, 
240. 

San Francisco, lectures in, 
296. 

Saratoga, visit to, 83. 

Savage Club of London, organ- 
ization of the, 263. 

Schenck, Robert E., 244. 

Scotland, visit to, 92. 

Seattle, speech in, 299. 

Sebastopol, visit to, 217. 

Seward, William H., in Paris, 
231; and the Mavrockadatis 
incident, 274; in Washington, 
281. 

Seymour, Thomas H., Minister 
to Russia, 251. 

Shanghai, visit to, 194. 

Shelley, Sir John Villiers, 268. 

Sherman, John, 244. 

Ships, naming of, 174. 

Singapore, visit to, 179. 

Slave trade, Chinese, 184, 203. 



346 



INDEX 



Smith, Archdeacon, meeting 

with, 88. 
Smith, Sidney, on kangaroos, 

169; prophecy in regard to 

Sydney, Australia, 143. 
Smuggling, 67. 
Smyrna, visit to, 215. 
Sovereign of the Seas, the, 74, 

221. 
Spectator, the London, pur- 
chase of, 273. 
Spence, Carroll, 217. 
Spencer, Bishop of Jamaica, 

meeting with, 88; dinner 

with, in London, 98. 
" Spread-Eagleism," 244. 
Staffordshire, introduction of 

tramways in, 268. 
Staffordshire, the, 74. 
Stettin, visit to, 251. 
Stevens, Paran, 106. 
Stoddard, Captain, meeting 

with, 87. 
Street-railways, first English, 

259. 
Strelna, meeting with Grand 

Duke Constantine at, 251. 
Suez, visit to, and land trip to 

Cairo, 209. 
Sumner, Charles, speaks in 

Boston on the war, 277. 
Swans, black, 168. 
Sydney, visit to, 143. 

Tai-ping rebellion, 196. 

Tasmania, visit to, 148; gold- 
fever in, 130, 141. 

Taylor, Moses, 166. 

Taylor, President, introduced 
to, 80. 

Tea, Chinese and Russian, 191, 
334. 



Temperance, 47, 99. 

Ten-pins, skill in, 79; in Aus- 
tralia, 135. 

The Hague, visit to, 251. 

Ticonderoga, visit to, 88. 

Tilden, Samuel J., and Union 
Pacific Railway, 288. 

Tilly, Governor, of New Bruns- 
wick, 113. 

Tombs, imprisonment in the, 
324. 

Train, Ellen, 5. 

Train, Col. Enoch, 52, 126, 223 j 
failure of, 173. 

Train, Josephine, 3. 

Train, Louisa, 9. 

Train, Louise, 5. 

Train, Oliver, 1, 7. 

Train Villa, Newport, 314. 

Tramways. See Street-rail- 
ways. 

Trescot, Commodore, meeting 
with, 88. 

Tucker, Beverley, consul in 
Liverpool, 123. 

Tweed Ring, exposure of the, 
32. 

Unicorn, the wreck of, 118. 
Union Pacific Railway, 269, 

283. 
Upas-tree, fable of the, 189. 
Upton, George B., 223. 

Verne, Jules, Le Tour du 
Monde en Quatre-vingts 
Jours, 301, 331. 

Victoria, Queen, 92, 104. 

Vienna, visit to, 235. 



Wade, Benjamin. 244. 
Wales, visit to, 101. 



347 



MY LIFE IN MANY STATES 






Waltham, Mass., homestead at, 
1, 19, 21. 

Ward, Frederick Townsend, in 
China, 196. 

Ward, Alfredo, 109. 

Ward, Gen. C. L., 243. 

Ward, Sallie, marriage to Bige- 
low Lawrence, 114. 

Washington, vacation trip to, 79. 

Washington Irving, the, 58, 72, 
144. 

Webster, Daniel, letter from, 80, 
87, 92; retained in the Frank- 
lin case, 63; Secretary of 
State, 80. 



Wellington, Duke of, 100. 
West Point, visit to, 82. 
Whistler, Major, 255. 
Willis, N. P., John Brougham 

on, 124. 
Wilson, Henry T., 148. 
Winslow, Henry A., 10. 
Woodhull, Victoria C, arrest 

of, 323. 
World tours, 331. 

Young America Abroad, 93, 

103, 257. 
Young America in Wall Street, 

125. 



THE END 



348 



